Problems with establishment - Part 2: Nordea

There are very few things in life one should be able to trust without any limits. On the top of this list there is the bank. If you start to think about it, your life goes through the bank. Using credit cards, ATM, paying bills.. we are dealing with our banks. Trusting our way of life to the bank; should the bank come short of our expectations, it would only take few days till we would be living on the streets.
I mean, how much cash do you have? If I would count together the amount in my wallet, pockets, small containers and so on, I might be able to rise as much as €20, and on any given day seldom more than €50. Why would I need to? There are five ATM's inside 50 metre radius, my bank is 100 metres from the front door and I have several cards if one should fail me. Having lots of currency in cash would be foolish; you can't very well walk around €1000 in your back pocket, and I would not feel very comfortable leaving that amount lying even in my apartment. Credit cards are a great invention; even if someone would get his hands on one, you should still know the PIN-number. And for added security, you can always kill your card if you find it missing.

But to the story;
I have been customer at Nordea since I was 13 years old. For many years I didn't have much contact with the bank; my mother would transfer money to my account over the Internet, which I would then withdraw from the nearest ATM. My needs were simple; I was living with my family, I didn't have rent or any other expenses that I would categorize as involuntary.
This all changed when I moved to my own. Suddenly I had a need for a debit card (instead of just an ATM card). I had bills to pay, clothes to buy, and so on. I went to my local branch and got Visa Electron and Netbank-account. The service wasn't excellent - I had to wait for my turn for a long while, and neither was the service excellent. But it would do; it wasn't like I would visit the branch every week.

As did my last story, this one properly starts after I started preparing my extended leave from the country, around October of last year. I went to the local branch after getting appointment two days previous, telling I wanted to discuss about getting MasterCard in-depth. Even as I had appointment, the service-lady came ten minutes late to the meeting - because she was in the middle of her lunch! As I had skipped mine to be there on timely manner, this didn't really start our conversation with the right foot.
Immediately she put the papers in front of me and started telling me how to fill them; she either didn't know or didn't care that I wanted answers to several questions I had. When I tried to ask questions, she kept repeating that I don't have to know those things. She didn't even know anything about the discounts I was eligible for. At one point she confessed she had actually specialized to home-loans. After several problems, where she disrespected and offended me quite strongly, I finally finished the papers, got answers to most of my questions (but on retrospect didn't find out about many important things that I should have), ordered the MasterCard and authorized the bank to remove the money directly from my account (instead of sending me a bill once a month). I left the bank angry, and told the extended version of this story several times to my friends and family.

It should be noted that when I started looking after insurance for my trip, I didn't even consider Nordea -- even though they were supposed to have the best offers.

Months went by. I left to Scotland, and the MasterCard served me excellently, till at 18th of April (Wednesday) when I got email from my father; apparently the card wasn't in the autopayment scheme as I had thought, and the bills had been sent to my home - where they had stayed unopened. My father had finally started to wonder why I had gotten so many letters from the bank and opened several -- and found the bills, of which some had graduated into reminder-bills, with additional late-fees.
The next day father called the bank and asked after my direct payment-authorization. Apparently I had made one, but they had never sent it forward to the Finance-department, which handled such things. But at least now the things were under control; the bills had been paid, everything was just dandy.

Then on the next Saturday (21st of April) I decided to withdraw some money from Lloyd's ATM. I put my card into the wall without realizing this would be the very last time I would see it. The machine ate it; apparently because of the bills (which I had paid three days earlier). To ad insult to injury, the bank had closed not 15 minutes earlier, and I would get my card back on Monday at the earliest.

Next Monday I went to the bank, where they courteously explained that as demanded by international banking agreements, my card had been destroyed. Swiftly I sent email to my bank, asking why this had happened and how they would take care of this, as I was now without money in a foreign land (I didn't mention that I had Visa Electron; I thought that this might increase the priority of my case, and help me find out how much they bothered to read about me).

24th I got the first email from the bank. It asks could I get the card back if Nordea would send guarantees? I explained that the card had been destroyed, but gave the contact information of Lloyd's Paisley-branch.

26th the representative of Nordea said I could get a new card but "that would mean the bill dated 7.5. should be paid immediately". I sent angry answer where I quote the amount of money on my bank account (several times larger than any bill I would have to pay) and mention that they still had the direct payment-authorization, and would you please use it?
After this they apparently actually checked my balance and other information, as the next (over courteous) email mentions that as I have Visa Electron and could I use that one instead, till I got home? After getting back, she would like to meet and discuss the problems. Very well.

Visa Electron didn't have much coverage in Scotland; shops regularly declined to accept it, which meant I had to use ATM's often (of which Nordea took €2+2,5%).

Back home, I found out that not only had the delightful service person mishandled my autopayment, she had also forgot to give me all the discounts (of which I had had to educate her on), so I had been paying €3,22 per month for the right to use MasterCard even from the months I didn't have the card. As a sugar frosting on the cake, they had also taken €4 from my account when my father had asked after the state of my account, after things had started going wrong. The bank even took money when you complained?!

Thankfully, after pointing out all these things to the person I had been in communication with, all the money were returned. But it did teach me not to trust banks (and Nordea in general) without limits.

Now that I have my money back, I have opened new account in Nooa Savingbank; unlike Nordea which is a publicly traded company (with the first priority of bringing money to its owners) Nooa's first priority is to increase the amount of money in the saving-accounts. This means that they don't issue ATM-cards, but they give up to five time more interest than Nordea ever did. And I can still get Visa Electron (which I get to design myself, oh fun).