You know it’s a scam when your bank manager gets intimate
Regular Tavern readers will know I have a deep distrust of internet banking.
I know I am being dinosaur-minded, but I can’t help feeling it’s just too easy for a crook to sneak into an electronic account and slide a few numbers around, or add a nought or two here or there.
I regard a signature as harder to fake than a number. My suspicions were confirmed when I received an urgent e-mail from a winery in the Darling area recently, warning me of a scam.
Apparently a number of the winery’s regular clients had received an official-looking letter telling them the cellar had changed its bank details, and giving the details of the new bank account.
It was all a scam and the cellar had not, in fact, changed its banking details at all. But you see how easy it all was?
All the scammer had to do was get hold of a piece of stationery with the winery’s logo on it and the names of a few of their clients, and they could have diverted a lot of money into the fake account.
I often receive apparently genuine notices from banks, including some with which I do not have accounts. I regard them all with suspicion and disbelief, specially when the so-called “bank manager” begins his letter: “Dearly Beloved Client.”
In all my years of having bank accounts, I have never been on such intimate terms with a bank manager. If any bank official needs to discuss my account, they are welcome to phone me and invite me to drop in for a chat. My time is not particularly valuable.
It’s not going to happen, I know, because the modern world will go to great lengths to avoid person-to-person contact. I suspect this has a great deal to do with smartphones.
The modern generation will happily sit together while speaking to somebody a thousand kilometres away, rather than chat face-to-face.
One of the painful aspects of being a bank manager in my father’s time was having to turn down a loan application when you knew the client was a good guy, but in financial trouble. It must have been hard to say:
“Sorry, George. I can’t help you.” George probably played tennis with you every Saturday. Clients were people in those days. Today it’s far easier to say: “The computer says no.”
Bank managers don’t play tennis with their clients today. Their clients are all numbers and numbers don’t play tennis.
Last Laugh
Forty years after they left school, they met at a school reunion. He was a widower and she was a widow and they got on like a house on fire.
Eventually he plucked up his courage and asked her: “Will you marry me?”
After a few seconds’ hesitation, she replied: “Yes, I will.”
The next morning, he remembered asking her to marry him but couldn’t remember whether she had said yes or no. Hesitantly, he phoned her and admitted he had forgotten her reply.
“Please tell me if you said yes or no,” he begged. “Oh you silly man, of course I said yes. And I am so glad you phoned me this morning because I couldn’t remember who had asked me.”