You Can Take That to the Bank...But You're Better Off Using Your Mattress

TD Bank's registered logo is "America's Most Convenient Bank." You've surely seen one of its numerous television ads featuring Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa. But I've been banking with TD Bank since it took over Commerce Bank, and I contend that TD Bank is perhaps America's least convenient bank. For instance:

On Monday, I queued up in one of my local branch's four drive-thru lanes to deposit a check. After stuffing the check and deposit slip into the container and sending it to the teller, I sat and waited for more than ten minutes as five customers who had entered their lane and began their transaction after me received service and drove away while I continued to wait.

Inconvenient.

The very next day, I drove to the same branch to obtain some temporary checks because I was still awaiting the arrival of my new ones. The customer-service representative informed me that they did not have any temporary checks and that I would have to go to another branch to get them.

Inconvenient!

These are inconveniences occurring just this week. There's also the $4.00 "maintenance fee" that TD Bank charged when my savings-account balance fell below $250.00. I didn't even know this fee existed...and they charged me for it four consecutive months. I accrued 75 measly cents in interest on my savings in 2010...yet TD Bank took $16 for "maintaining" my account! What did that maintenance require? Leaning over to shift cheeks while sitting on their fat asses staring at the sun and waiting for 5:00 so they could run to Prospector's and down a martini with my money? Okay, so I have Web access to my account, which could have alerted me earlier to this hidden fee—but I rarely used my savings account in 2010 and seldom had need to check it. Bottom line:

In...con...ven...ient.

And if I had a nickel for every time a TD Bank ATM was out of service when I needed to use it, I'd have just enough money to open another TD Bank savings account and lose $4 a month in maintenance fees...

Quite inconvenient.

Further making its customers' lives more difficult, TD Bank used to allot to account holders two money orders a year without charge. A TD Bank money order now costs an account holder $4.

Extremely inconvenient!

TD Bank's advertising campaign further boasts about its "legendary service" (as seen in small print in the ad above). I would very much like Regis and/or Kelly to explain what's so "legendary" about it. Banking, in one form or another, has existed since antiquity. Certainly, the banking families of Renaissance Italy introduced practices that are still in use today, and Alexander Hamilton proved to be one of the greatest banking minds in modern history, organizing the first bank of our fledgling nation. But TD Bank as an operating unit only dates back to October 2008—hardly a history with which to achieve "legendary" service. Now, had TD Bank lent substantial sums to Charles V so he could finance his wars against the Valois kings of France, or perhaps had it provided coin-counting machines and safety-deposit boxes to the Pilgrims, then a claim of "legendary service" might be justified. But TD Bank reviving the tradition of offering free lollipops at its counter doesn't cut it. Finance a crusade or two... Provide home-equity loans in gold ducats... Offer a 700-year CD so you'll have a viable past by the time it matures... At least give out free quill & inkwells instead of those cheap pens... Something to legitimize your claim...

Most convenient?

Perhaps TD Bank should drop Regis and Kelly in favor of the Church Lady so as to make more obvious that its claim is a goof.

Besides, Dana Carvey needs the work...



Postscript

The checks I ordered more than three weeks ago still have not arrived.

Ludicrously inconvenient!

(TD Bank ad copyright TD Bank; Church Lady photo copyright NBC.)