Banks are supposed to be kissing my ass, not vice-versa...

So with my girlfriend and her brother I have purchased a nice 2 storey home in Rivervale, a suburb of Perth. So far so good. We'll all put in equal amounts to purchase the home and hopefully make a tidy profit when it comes time to sell. Settlement is on Thursday, so we are trying to get everything finalised as soon as possible.

Here's where it gets difficult...
Today we had to sign the loan papers at Bank 1, so we all arranged to get off work to meet there.
"Sorry, we don't have the papers...", says the enquiries chick...
"But we were assured they would be here today", we reply.
So we head out to the street to call our settlement agent. Lucky we hung around for a while because the enquiries chick came out to say she had found the papers.
So back into the bank we go...

Now, after finally viewing the paperwork it's noticed that my girlfriend's bro's name has been spelt as 'James' instead of his name which is totally different. So then we have to find out what we need to do with regard to the error. It seems, and it better be right, that we just needed to correct the error and initial it. Anyway with other small anomalies and hold ups we get it all sorted.

Next we needed to get the money for our deposits organised and given to the settlement agent. No worries, we'll just get a bank cheque...
"You realise that a bank cheque takes 3 days to clear?", says the loans officer.
For fks sake, it is a BANK cheque, not a personal cheque, and it still takes three days to clear. If you can't trust a bank to have funds, who can you trust!?! I'm sure its a diddle on their part.

This is what I reckon happens... The customer asks Bank 1 for a bank cheque, B1 transfers the money to a holding account which accrues interest for 3 days, B1 finally transfers to B2... Think of the millions of dollars they'd make by doing that...

Anyway, the dude suggests we do an electronic bank transfer from our bank to the settlement agent's bank. Okay we'll do that, so off we toddle to Bank 2.
Thinking that this would be an abnormal thing we are doing, we wait in line to see the enquiries assistants. After fifteen or so minutes we get called up...
"We want to do this..."
"You can do that at the teller window...", says the assistant.
After muttering under our breath we go to a teller window.
"We want to do this..."
"Ohh, as you won't have more than $5000 left in the account you have to see the enquiries assistants to close the account..."
FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARK...

So they sort that bit out without us needing to go to the enquiries section again. So back to doing the electronic funds transfer...
"You realise this will take 3 days to clear?"
You'd understand how irate we are becoming now, but alas we keep a civil tongue, as abusing people gets you less than nowhere. This is an electronic funds transfer, which in this day and age when we can send emails around the world in seconds, should not be too difficult...

In the end they wrote up something called a 'warrant' which is physically taken to a branch of the receiving bank. If I get a call Tuesday asking for the funds, I'll be closing all of my accounts and going to another bank/building society (or credit union). I actually closed all my accounts with Bank 1 originally because of their fk ups. And they're obviously not trying to win me back with the latest effort.

Banks are the worst for providing what they charge for, in normal business people would complain to the fair trades commission, but banks seem immune... I pay to have my money with the bank, I pay to take money out of the bank, I pay to use their ATMs, I pay to speak to a teller... and the Government allows them to keep raising their fees while providing less service.
They want us all to be doing our banking electronically, which cuts the banks costs further, and yet half the time that is more difficult than walking in to a branch, getting the money out as cash and delivering it yourself to the payee.

To the banks, "You can all go and get fkkd!!"...