AUGUST 15, 2019 – As administrator of my uncle’s estate, I sold some stock—on July 12. Little did I know that I’d have to growl at various levels of “customer service representatives” and expend my entire repertoire of expletives before the check arrived would arrive–30 days later.
My extreme frustration was almost matched by my curiosity as to how a stock transfer agent hired by countless public companies could be so dysfunctional.
Just one of my many calls went like this:
ME (after the first check was inexplicably lost in the mail): Doesn’t it strike you as a bit “last-century” to be sending such large checks in the regular mail?”
REPRESENTATIVE: That’s the only way we can do it.
ME: Why is that the only way you can do it?
REPRESENTATIVE: Because it is.
ME: How old are you?
REPRESENTATIVE: Twenty-seven.
ME: Good. As a 27-year old, don’t you think it’s old-fashioned to say the only way you can remit substantial amounts of funds to people is by cutting an old-fashioned check and entrusting it to the United States Postal Service?
REPRESENTATIVE: Maybe, but we do it to prevent fraud.
ME: Fraud is exactly why you would NOT send a check by regular mail.
REPRESENTATIVE: That’s the only way we can send it.
ME: Okay, look. Let’s try to think here—just a little bit, because that’s not the only way. I’m in downtown Minneapolis and you’re in Mendota Heights, Minnesota—a distance of . . . I’m guessing . . . 10 miles.
REPRESENTATIVE: We could issue a replacement check, which takes from five to 10 days, and when it’s ready we could call you and you could drive over and pick it up.
ME: I’m not doing that. Let me suggest another way. It involves a commercial courier . . . Wait! You mean to tell me it’s going to take another five to 10 days just to issue a replacement check?!
Around and round we went with no satisfactory resolution. I subsequently tangled with a collection of other “customer service representatives,” their supervisors, and the supervisors’ supervisors. Not until a full month after the first contact (the sale of the stock) with those people did the (second replacement) check arrive.
Rather late in the game—while on interminable hold—I happened to look at the entity’s website. I clicked on the “Leadership” tab. Lo and behold, I knew a couple of the members of the “Senior Team” from my banking days long ago. How I wanted to send them a nastygram and a piece of my mind!
But now that the check has arrived, been deposited and cleared, I’ve lost my incentive to write a cleverly pointed letter shaming them for running such a dysfunctional organization.
Besides, I’m battling “customer service representatives” at a couple of other organizations “too big to fail”—or is it, “too big to succeed”? Numerous calls and email up and down the chain of command. With them, the checks are not yet even “in the mail.”
“Check” back with me . . . about a month from now.
© 2019 Eric Nilsson
