Cash Strapped
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday September 2, 1998
OOOOOOH, no love, we don't do personal loans here any more," grimaced the woman in the Loans Department of Bondi Junction's Advance Bank office which gave me my original loan three years ago.
"You have to ring up these days. Here's the number." Fair enough.
Phone banking had finally caught up with me. You've seen the literature; it's as easy as punching a few buttons and, voila, there's dosh in your poche.
Of course, it's not like that in real life. In real life you sit there like a dill for 45 minutes, listening to an inane radio station, waiting for someone to pick up the phone.
Finally, on came Sandra or Samantha or somesuch. She tells me that the Advance Bank doesn't actually do personal loans any more; nada, nil, zilch. I have to refinance my loan with its new parent, St George.
Fair enough.
"So we need a letter of employment ..."
But my wages have been paid into the same bank account for the past three-and-a-half years; the $248 standing order has been lurching out of one account and into the loan account with alarming regularity ever since. You know where I work.
"Advance does, we don't." Fair enough.
The lady at the St George branch in Bondi Junction is very nice. She takes copies of my pay slips, my letter of employment, my rent receipts ... and yes, it's for a car.
"So which account do you want it in?"
My Advance cheque account will do nicely, thanks. Oops, no can do. This is a St George loan; it has to go into a St George account.
But I don't have one. "Then you'll have to open one." And get my wages paid into the new account, to cover the new standing order? "Yes."
Fair enough.
And I take it the $6,000 remaining on the Advance loan will be automatically paid off by this new, refinanced loan sitting snugly in the new account?
"Oh, no. I'll have to print you out a cheque, which you then have to pay in at the Advance Bank office around the corner."
I looked at the rain outside, and the time.
Oh, fair enough.
The man at Advance listened sceptically to my explanation. I didn't blame him. He wandered off and the clock ticked on.
"Where did you get this figure from?" he asked when he came back.
From your counterpart at St George. She said I should pay off my loan with it. Advance and St George are now all one bank, sort of, and ...
"Yes, but this isn't enough." Not enough?
"The loan has to be calculated to this precise moment." Well, I don't understand how that could happen - surely she's plugged in to the Advance computer system? "What was the woman's name at St George?"
I told him and he vanished to the telephone. For about 15 minutes. At least I wasn't out there in the rain. But I was hoping to get to work some time that day.
"Sorry, but you'll have to take this back to St George and get issued with another ..."
Look, what's the difference between the two figures? Could I perhaps pay the difference in cash? "Of course you can, sir."
Oh ... fair enough.
I watched with sinking heart as he began writing the figures down on a piece of scrap paper and doing the calculations: 10 minus six, carry one ...
Reading it upside down, I tapped the sum into my calculator: $76.
"That'll be $76, sir."
Fair. And I had enough cash.
I handed over $100. And he started doing his scribbly sums again. One hundred minus 76? On paper? In a bank?
Twenty-four dollars, I suggested (the calculator strangely untouched).
"There's your $24. Sorry about the delay, sir. Have a good day."
Just one thing: I take it the Advance Bank standing order gets stopped automatically, seeing that the loan doesn't exist any more?
"Oh, no sir. We'll have to fill in one more form if you want to do that."
Fair enough.
There: the final signature.
"That'll take seven days, sir."
Enough!
© 1998 Sydney Morning Herald
