Remember the olden days when banks were friendly? When they gave you a toaster to open an account and paid you 4% interest. No? It's been a while.

I wanted to close my Bank of America checking account for reasons that probably wouldn't surprise anyone who's ever dealt with the Bank of America. When I explained this to the local branch manager, in approximately that way, he refused to give me my money. He said I could make an appointment to get it in a week. Like they had my money stored — safely, I'm sure — in Vladivostok and they needed to ship it by freighter to the branch.

They weren't waiting for some check to clear. This was all my money, and it was all liquid. Theoretically. The Bank of America does not tell you — or at least they never told me, and they didn't choose to comment for this article — that at some point, they just might refuse to give you your money back.

Maybe they didn't have the cash. But it's not like I kept millions in that checking account. And I would have been happy to — okay, "happy" might not be the right word — but I would have taken a check, Though I was starting to wonder if they were good for it.

Wells Fargo seems far more accommodating. My wife and I live in California. Recently, a woman in Texas went into a Wells Fargo branch there, claimed to be my wife, and wanted to withdraw $13,000 of our money. They gave it to her. Immediately. Now that's customer service. None of this "Come back in a week" stuff for them. They just handed it over.

I may have uncovered Wells Fargo's problem. Once, I called my local branch to transfer money from checking to savings. The woman refused to do it because, she said, she didn't recognize my voice. Note, this was not a computer doing voice verification. This was some local teller. As a system of identity verification, it needs work.

I imagine the teller in Texas thinking, "The customer's ID looks a bit bogus. The address doesn't match up, and her signature's not right. But, damn, she sure sounds like Rosemarie Maher. I'd better give her the money."

Wells Fargo, at least, quickly admitted their error and replaced the funds. Unlike what I'll call The Bank of Negligence and Dereliction, or N&D. My mother wasn't wealthy, and all her funds were set up as payable on death to her children. Death, unfortunately, happened. Later, I went into an N&D branch, presented a death certificate, and was given a check for my share. Unfortunately, I deposited it directly into my N&D account.

The next day, my brother in Connecticut went into his local N&D branch. (Negligence and Dereliction is everywhere.) "Payable upon death" may seem straightforward. And the Connecticut branch manager seemed clear on the concept of death. But the payable part he didn't get at all. My brother's normally good with self-important jackasses — he was, after all, in the insurance industry. Unfortunately, with incompetent, self-important jackasses, he's likely to identify them as such. At volume and in very specific detail. The upshot? My mother's account was abruptly frozen. No one could get their share. Even my payment was clawed back out of my personal account.

They sent our case to Decedent Processing. Decedent Processing processes with the speed of decedents — or worse — lawyers. After two months of calling and emailing, I still hadn't discovered the problem. Then something finally happened. They sent a form letter — to my mother! Apparently, they weren't all that clear on the concept of death after all.

In Ashtabula, Ohio, two women found their roommate dead. They propped him up in the car, drove to the drive-through at his bank, and withdrew an unspecified amount from his account. If the alternative was trying to collect on a payable on death account, I don't blame them.

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Photo credit: Andre Taissin at Unsplash