Wrapping Up PNC

The VP of Retail and Customer Service was delightful, kind, thoughtful, and disturbed by what I brought to her attention.

Her minion, another lovely woman, was equally helpful.

No, my Bill Pay system could not be uploaded to my accoutn; there was a glitch in the technology that dumped the data.  But on Monday (don't have a banking problem at the end of the week) when they return to work, another minion lower on the totem pole will spend the day uploading all my information.  The notion of another human being paid to do what I willfully refused to consider makes me squeamish.  Still, I didn't turn down the offer.  I just laughed, a little.

Yes, the 1st minion agreed, the VP was a wonderful boss and a terrific human being.  She follows through and stays tight with her team.  She cares about the customer.

All of that is wonderful.

It doesn't detract from the annoyance of having to go on-line to each and every payee, paying the minimum balance and changing from e-bills to paper.  I felt like I was going back in time to Marin, where I'd pay my bills by check, entering them into Quick Books, and then having The Ballerina do the rest.  She's a bookkeeper and a friend and the only one I trusted to see how much I spent every month.  She did in 20 minutes what took me half a day.  I bought her lunch.  It worked.

I'm not depositing any more money into PNC.  Their systems scare me.  This morning I tried to see if my Social Security check had been deposited last month (I forgot to ask anyone when I had them on the phone).  My computer remembered my sign in name for the GRIN account, and there it was.  I clicked on the personal accounts button and found, instead of my account, this message - Your session has been inactive for more than 15 minutes. You are now being signed off Online Banking.

Considering that I had done nothing more than open the link, this was odd.  Perhaps PNC operates on a faster time clock that I do.  Perhaps 1 minute had passed, certainly not 15.  

I sighed and signed into my personal account using my other identity and found the deposit, just where it should have been.  The rest of the words and numbers on the screen were less than helpful.  My Bill Pay has not been typed in yet, and my old statements are bare bones and useless.  

To be fair, it's the weekend so we don't know who will be working but on Monday morning, at the latest......  True, but annoying since one of the things that needs to be done is linking both accounts.

PNC will reach out to me on Monday when everything is finished.  The humans I spoke to were thoughtful, if not overly apologetic.  My concerns for my friends who work at the bank were glossed over - change is hard; new things take time to settle in; we've done many of these with thousands of banks and there are always issues - though, and that made me sad.

Every denizen who commented on the prior posts mentioned credit unions, using comforting and complimentary words.  I did some research on the interwebs and found the only down side was, perhaps, a paucity of products. Since I'm only interested in a checking account for me and some kind of not-for-profit account for GRIN, I saw no reason not to pursue the quest.

Googling credit unions near me revealed one I hadn't noticed before and reminded me of two others, one of which is in a bright and shiny and new building at a major intersection.... which intersection is currently under extensive renovation and expansion. The other one is a little further than that.  None are as convenient as around the corner.

I don't have the energy to deal with this any longer.  I'll change the rest of the e-bills to paper.  I'll pay bills using my old checks and not their on-linesystem, depositing only enough money to cover what I write.  When I have time, I'll make another plan.  For now, I'm done thinking about this.

It's November 1st - time to begin baking for The Brownie List.  Hanukkah is right on the heels of Thanksgiving.  I'd much rather put my thoughts and energies there.