I’m on hold with my bank right now. I’ll won’t tell you which bank, because someone might be trolling my blog to collect a bunch of personal data about me and do stuff to me and steal all my money. I’ll call it… The Bank. (I’m feeling inspired.)

Exactly every 30 seconds, a recording of a lady’s voice interrupts the muse-ACK to tell me this: “Thank you for holding. All of our specialists are busy assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.” My phone tells me this call has lasted 39 minutes so far. I spent the first 10 speaking with a rep before he put me on hold, so I’ve now heard the lady speak her lines almost 60 times.

The tic in my right eye is going strong.

I called The Bank because I need a February statement for a savings account. I need it to give to The Other Bank, which we’re using to refinance our mortgage and fund some renovations. (Ssssshhh, don’t tell anyone, I don’t want to jinx the projects.) The Other Bank has our November, December, and January statements, so naturally it wants February as well now.

I do on-line statements whenever possible. I don’t see the point of getting paper statements that I throw directly into the trash. With something like a savings account, I don’t even really look at a statement ever. I use the on-line app for The Bank, and whenever I log in I see the summary page with my account balances. As long as the numbers look familiar, I’m good, right?

Right. But now we have to give The Other Bank a bunch of financial paper, so I’ve been visiting The Bank’s website to grab PDFs of my on-line statements for 3 accounts — one checking, two savings. It was all fine until I was told I needed to provide February statements. I shimmied on over to the on-line banking site, and I navigated my way to the on-line statement section, and then I selected one of the savings accounts, and I discovered that the most recent statement was from January. Hm.

It’s mid-March now. This wasn’t right. So I called The Bank. The friendly rep, I’ll call him Mr. Rep, told me that there was no February statement because this savings account had been switched over to quarterly statements.

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Did you request it?”

“No. I don’t think so. Can I do that?”

“I don’t know.”

And so it went. we figured out that there’s no way for a customer to select quarterly statements via the on-line system. So someone in PNC, or a ghost in its machines, switched this particular savings account to quarterly statements. Mr. Rep switched it back to monthly statements, so now we’ll get a March statement in a couple weeks. But what about February? Mr. Rep thought PNC wouldn’t be able to generate a February statement.

I explained to Mr. Rep my problem. “Mr. Rep, The Other Bank needs paper from me for underwriting on our refi. So far The Other Bank seems to be, uh, RIGID about what they require. So if The Bank can’t generate a February statement, I’m going to have a problem because The Other Bank will think I’m withholding a statement for some reason. I think The Bank should be able to figure this out. You are, after all, The Bank.”

Mr. Rep agreed. He put me on hold and said he would be back. That was, oh… 46 minutes ago.

“Thank you for holding. All of our specialists are busy assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.”

(30 seconds)

“Thank you for holding. All of our specialists are busy assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.”

(30 seconds)

“Thank you for holding. All of our specialists are busy assisting other customers. Please continue to hold and your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.”