Why do some institutions do things like this?

It just seems like bad policy and, in this day and age of online reviews and complaints, it doesn’t look good for the company!

Check out this story from Reddit and you’ll understand what I’m yammering on about…

Can’t close my overseas bank account without visiting a branch in person? Ok, I won’t close it.

“We lived in another country for a few years, and opened an account with MajorBank to get paid, pay bills, etc.

Sure we kept a few home country accounts open with some money in them because we thought we would eventually move back, but we used the MajorBank account for most everything.

We eventually moved back to our home country, but kept the MajorBank account open for a few months to make sure all our outstanding bills were paid, and to wait to convert all our foreign currency to home currency at a better exchange rate than where the foreign currency was languishing at the time.

That wasn’t gonna work…

After the eventual currency exchange and repatriation to our home country accounts, my wife tried to close the account but MajorBank insisted that we could only do so in person.

This is problematic because we now live very, very far away Thousands upon thousands of kilometers.

“Well, you could also appear in person at our overseas branch located in MajorCity.”

Oh sure, that would only take us two days to drive, hundreds in gas, and an overnight stay in a hotel in MajorCity at hundreds per night to appear in person.

Yeah, great idea. Maybe we’ll fly and get it all done in one day for the low price of nearly a thousand.

For reasons not entirely clear to me, when we transferred the money from MajorBank to the currency exchange company, we ended up with the equivalent of 75 cents left in the MajorBank account.

Let it sit there!

So since we’re not willing to spend hundreds or thousands to recover a few cents, we just…didn’t close the account.

The 75 cents are still there.

There are no fees or anything that we can see on our statements…that they paper mail to us half a world away, every month, and have for years now.

I mean, I could probably go paperless but it seems I have forgotten my password by now on this account I never use.”

And here’s what Reddit users had to say.

This reader chimed in.

Another person had a lot to say.

This Reddit user shared their thoughts.

Another person chimed in.

And this Reddit user spoke up.

What a silly policy…

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.