The one in which I tell my bank to shove their letter up their arse

Dear Dormant and Inactive Manager,

Thank you for your letter thanking Cog for a request for a search of your records for an account in her name. 

She did not make this request.  You wrote to her asking her to complete a tax form for this account so that she could continue to earn tax free interest on it, as she had turned 16.

It would be remarkably difficult for a 16 year old in full time education to exceed the tax limit on earnings but hey-ho, rules is rules so she diligently signed and returned your form.

She received another letter from you returning the form advising you could not accept it and she had to go into a branch.  I pointed out, over the phone, that you do not have a branch open that she can get to as she has to catch her school bus home and you do not have a branch in our village.  She has a commitment on a Saturday, volunteering, and cannot attend a Saturday appointment.

We did not feel it was worth making an after school appointment and her paying £5 to catch a later bus from the town to save paying tax on the generous interest you would pay on the account balance of £6.81, so we decided to leave it as it was.

This wasn't good enough for you and she received yet another letter telling her to go to a branch to sort it out.  She sent you a letter in return telling you to close the account and transfer the money into her current account.  This account is held at exactly the same branch and she produced appropriate documents when she opened it.  And yet now, for an account that was already open at the time of her opening her current account, you need her to produce documentation again.

In your letter you said that to ensure the account is excluded from any government scheme a credit on the account, no matter how small, would be acceptable.  Internet banking would not allow me to transfer a penny into the account, so I popped into a branch during my lunch break to pay it in. No, they wouldn't allow me to spend a penny either.  Do you train your all your staff to this high level of unhelpfulness or do you specifically recruit the skills in?

How interesting that you think a 16 year old would have a full driving license or a utility bill with her name on.  Luckily as a privileged, middle class child she does own a passport.  This should give you a clue that we can afford to tell you keep the money and roll your letter as tight as you can and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.

So I guess this means leaving £6.81 to wallow for a longer period at your expense before handing it over to our Government’s Treasury.  I'm sure it won’t greatly affect the national debt but every little helps to pay for the gargantuan amounts of money us tax payers have already sunk into the banking industry to keep your general incompetence afloat.

I would also like to point out that Cog’s experience of your bank in all this means that she is highly unlikely to use you as her permanent banking facility as she moves towards a lifetime time of student debt on which another bank can feast its greedy hands.

I hope my response has been as helpful as yours