Tag: rant

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Health Rant

Seeking Solutions: Anticipating Having to Wake Up Prevents Me from Sleeping!

Messy Bed from Another Sleepless Night
Messy Bed from Another Sleepless Night

I struggle with sleep. Among my most frustrating sleep-related problems is my inability to fall asleep once I start anticipating having to wake up. Once my alarm is set, I start thinking of the reducing amount of time I have to sleep. I find myself counting down the time to the point that it makes me anxious. I’ll start worrying about how tired I’ll be if I don’t fall asleep and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s so frustrating and I haven’t found a solid solution for it yet. Apparently I’m not alone. I’ve seen some posts refer to it as “alarm anxiety”. That said, aside from the usual sleep hygiene tips like hiding the alarm clock, breathing exercises, and meditation, there seems to be no magic solution – and that grinds my gears.

How the Problem Manifested Itself This Time

Just today I faced a particularly frustrating case of this. This week I had a string of family events for three days in a row. I haven’t been feeling so hot lately and really wanted to sleep last night to feel healthy for today’s event. I arranged for myself to be able to get 7h of sleep. It took me about an hour to fall asleep. Next thing I knew, my partner’s alarm clock was waking me up. Unfortunately, they took a while to silence it and by the time they did, I was fully awake. They had set their alarm for almost 2h earlier than I had set mine for.

Frustrated, I lied there trying to sleep in vain only for my alarm to sound 2h later while I was still lying there awake. During those 2h I tried breathing exercises, listening to a relaxing podcast, different positions, but nothing helped me get back to sleep. I couldn’t stop the nagging thought I was about to lose 2h sleep and it seemed to feel totally outside my control which frustrated me. Now, I’m writing out of frustration because I feel too tired to go about the rest of my day’s plans and I can’t shake the feeling that I lost a full day of my weekend.

It Happens Often Enough in Multiple Contexts

I get this in other contexts as well. On the weekends, for example, I tend to take advantage of being able to sleep in. By the time Monday rears its head, I find myself struggling to fall asleep just because I know I’ll be needing to wake up to be ready for work by a fixed time again. It’s a frustrating way to kick off the week.

Another example is when I take an overnight flight. I think it’s the combination of feeling pressure to sleep so I don’t get sick/exhausted, knowing there’s a limited amount of time, and just being physically uncomfortable that makes it nearly impossible for me to sleep on a plane.

Anyone Figure this Out?

I’m really frustrated today because of this. I had to fight the urge to make my partner feel guilty for having woken me up early. Surely nothing good can come from that. There’s a part of me that seems to want to play victim and seek their pity for some reason. In reality, I should really just want the much needed shut-eye.

I know that if I need to sleep before an event or something, there are tricks I could take to ensure a decent night’s sleep. For example, I can pop a sleeping pill, take a warm bath, meditate and stretch beforehand, and more. The problem is, something it feels too late to employ these strategies, e.g. when I woke up today within a 2h window of when I’d have to wake up, I could have meditated and stretched during that time, but it’s also hard to know whether I could have fallen asleep without doing such things which would have maximized my slumber time. There’s no guarantee these strategies would work either and they could just eat up precious sleep time. If anyone has recommendations to solve this problem, I’m all ears!

Categories
Rant

TD Strikes Again: Fees Even They Can’t Explain

Fed up with TD
Photo by Moose

In my last post about my experiences with TD just days ago, I was simply trying to be able to spend my own business’ money again. Fortunately, I managed to get that resolved. Their claim is that when you have a two-to-sign policy on an account you cannot have access to an EasyWeb account with the ability to spend anything, including your taxes. Small businesses take note! For all transactions both signatories need to be physically present at the bank. Somehow, they allowed us to work that way for years, but when they renewed our cards they decided to revoke our full online access without telling us. Neat! Ultimately, we had to solve it by both going to the bank and removing the two-to-sign policy altogether.

Now that I have access to my account again, I look at the transaction history and see two charges of $1.50 with the description: “CHQ-Image Fee” on the 1st of the month. I write to them via secure messaging and they respond with the following:

TD’s First Reply via Secure Messaging

Thank you for taking the time to review your TD Basic Business Plan account and noticing this fee. I can certainly understand how confusing unexpected fees can be, considering you have not used any cheques for the month of August. I happy to help provide clarification regarding the Cheque Image Return service and fees.

The Cheque Return Fee (CRF) for $2.00 monthly is one of our convenient record keeping options which forwards printed digital images of the front of all cheques you have written during the month with your monthly statement. This fee is charged monthly, regardless of cheques are issued from the accounts.

If you feel the service is not required, it will need to be cancelled by changing your record keeping options, this can be done online, over the phone or in branch.

If you would like to remove this service, I would recommend you change your record keeping options on your EasyWeb to online statements. Via EasyWeb within Profile & Settings -> Notifications & Alerts -> Delivery Preferences.

**Please make sure you select the online only option NOT the online option with cheque return.**

**Please note that until you change your record keeping options, you will still incur the cheque return fee.

Note that I bolded the most relevant part above for emphasis

Now, notice two thing. First, the fee name they provide isn’t even the one on my account. Second, the fee on my account was for the amount of $1.50, charged twice, but they are talking about a $2 fee. Regardless, I look into the menu options they described, and, sure enough it doesn’t even exist. Naturally, I write this to them as a response and this is what they came back with:

Secure Online Messaging: Take Two

I can confirm that when an account type is changed, the statement delivery preferences does change and default to the option that offers all the services in one. That said, we are able to request copy of the cheque that is not recognized, however, we mail a copy to your address which may between 7 to 10 business days. This services offers instant access to all cheques written throughout the month.

I tell them I have no use for this service so I would like to stop paying the fees. Because the menu options they told me to use don’t exist, I asked them to cancel it. Here’s what they responded with:

Third Times A Charm? (Spoiler: Nope)

It appears that you are looking to change your statement delivery preferences for your small business chequing account. I believe there is some miscommunication, and I do apologize. To change your statement delivery preference off “Cheque Return” and not get charged $2.00. You’ll need to call TD Small Business, as the change is not available through EasyWeb.

Seriously? So, wanting to just get this silly item off my to-do list, I give them a call. What do they tell me? It’s not a monthly fee at all! Rather, they charge this fee whenever someone views a cheque. They explained that with our previous account type, they were waiving the fee. They told me very clearly before switching my account that the only difference is the number of transactions we could make. Argh!!

Told To Call Them, Once Again

Anyhow, I tell the support agent that I’m the only person actively using our account today and haven’t viewed any cheques because I write them all myself anyway and have no reason to go look at the cheques I wrote. As you can see in the written communication above, the agent actually said: “I can certainly understand how confusing unexpected fees can be, considering you have not used any cheques for the month of August”. The agent told me one of us must have looked at the cheques. I assured him we did not and asked when we accessed it. He asked me to hold. He came back and said he did not know and to let them know if we see the charges again. I reiterated that we never viewed the cheques, but he said there was nothing else he could do.

So, ultimately, what are we paying for? Who knows. We sure don’t and apparently neither does TD.

TL;DR

Here is a summary of all the things that went wrong:

  1. We wanted to save on fees. TD told us we could downgrade to a basic account and the only difference is the number of free transactions. Once downgraded, we started getting random cheque-viewing fees. These fees cost more than half the new monthly account fee!
  2. They misread what the charges are. Both the amounts they charged and the description
  3. They led me to a menu to change an option that doesn’t exist
  4. Once again, the online support agent tells me they are powerless to help me and I need to call them
  5. Just like last time, the agent on the phone gave me very different information than the online agents
  6. Phone agent claims we access cheques that we didn’t. The online agent even wrote that we didn’t even use any! The phone agent couldn’t find any evidence that we accessed it, but kept the charges anyway

Save Us De-Fi!

Decentralized banking can’t come soon enough!

Categories
Rant

Rant Time! TD Bank is Dated and Disorganized

TD makes life difficult

Generally, I tend to be rather patient and understanding. Especially during the current pandemic, I appreciate any business that remains open to serve customers. Doing banking for my business with TD bank has made my life difficult enough times now that I feel the need to say something about it.

How it started

My online business has been losing steam lately. Looking to minimize expenses, I noticed that we were paying $19 per month for our TD business account. We really only use it to collect payments from customers, pay suppliers, and pay taxes. I suspected there must be a way to lower those high monthly fees since our account activity has been minimal. So, I reached out to TD and inquired about ways to save on fees.

First, I tried to resolved it online, but was told I’d need to call them. I ended up having multiple calls speaking with different people.

Finally, they told me to present myself at my branch in person with my co-founder. They said that the branch could downgrade our account to a $5/month plan without losing anything. Preferring to avoid going in person and dragging my co-founder along, I called back. I got another person and reiterated my preference not to go in person to avoid spreading the virus. They insisted that myself and my co-founder go in person due to our 2-to-sign policy. Fortunately, the agent offered me a tip. He explained that the employees working at the branch have more powers than the general phone support staff. So, I called the branch and alas I managed to downgrade my account over the phone. Awesome, right?

I received a new client card in the mail. It specified that I would need to make a transaction using my PIN to activate the client card. Receiving the card reminded me I needed to schedule a payment. However, when adding a payee (the government), the website told me I no longer had the required access! What?!

My radical dream: To be able to do what I’ve always done again

Once again, I called their customer support line. It turned out that when they downgraded my account they reset my account privileges. Consequently, I lost the ability to use my EasyWeb account to make payments! They gave me precise instructions that I confirmed. I would need to present myself at any TD with 2 pieces of ID. They told me to request “full access with point of sale”. Okay… A quick Google search showed me that there’s a single TD open on Saturdays in Montreal. Perfect! I hopped on my bike and rushed over to Westmount to get it done!

I explained my situation in person to the teller. First she replied that I should have access. Obviously, I replied that I don’t; otherwise I wouldn’t have made the journey over to see her. She said she needed to escalate it to her manager. She returned from his office and confirmed that there’s nothing she can do. Because we have a 2-to-sign policy, my co-founder and I would have to go to our branch, specifically. I protested that I’d been using the account for years. I’ve been the only active person in my business for years. She retorted that whoever gave me that permission initially must have made a mistake. She asked me to step aside so she could help someone else. Her manager came to see me and repeated the same thing.

The reason why I’m particularly pissed off is not just that they wasted my time. It’s also that the information I’m getting from their staff, once again, is inconsistent or incomplete. Due to COVID-19, most business have adapted their ways of operating to allow most work to be done online. This expensive bank, however, insists on making people go to different locations along with other people.

What’s really grinding my gears here

  1. There’s a freaking pandemic. Why can’t the bank adapt like the rest of the world to stop making people show up in person? We’re already half a year into the pandemic
  2. Why did they remove my ability to make payments once securely authenticated to my online account?! I can’t even pay my taxes online any longer. I’ve had that access for years
  3. Assume it was a mistake allowing me to spend our own money online when they set up the account initially. Why didn’t any of the many employees involved warn me about losing that fundamental ability by downgrading my account?
  4. The customer service rep authenticated me to access my account, she should have seen we have a two-to-sign policy. She also failed to inform me that I’d need to bring another person. She also stated clearly that I could go to any location to have the change made
  5. The staff today realized that my account was initially misconfigured. I also made it clear that I was misinformed by the agent on the phone. Given this information, they made no effort to rectify the situation themselves. Also, would it not make sense for them to follow-up with the agent I spoke to? At least try to get aligned and see if someone is missing information. This would also prevent the further spread of misinformation since someone was obviously wrong. I really felt they just wanted me out because it was near closing time

Conclusion

All in all, I realize this isn’t a deplorable or noteworthy situation by any means. It’s an annoying inconvenience. I doubt anyone will even read this, frankly. I’m just irritated and feel annoyed. Why? Because I’m fairly confident I’m going to continue to bounced around before I can finally get this silly situation resolved. I mean, I’m just asking to be able to use my bank account to spend money again. I want to pay my taxes like I was doing a month ago! I’m aware that typically employees rarely care to make extra effort to ensure their business improves. So, I don’t think these employees are exceptionally bad either, but I find it super disappointing that TD has employees communicating different information depending on who you speak to over what medium or what location.

In protest, I shall buy more bitcoin 😉