Commonwealth Bank Australia:

Dear CEO Person,

This letter is to advise you that your bank has removed my credit card from my netbank service. (I wrote about these events on November 11th 2011)

I am in China. I cannot transfer money from my bank account to my credit card (currently in debit to about $700) because your staff have disconnected the credit card. I was advised that I could use BPAY but that facility does not work in my Secure Commonwealth netbank because it requires that I have a TOKEN - but I don't have one.

I can't get one because I don't have a landline to phone the Commonwealth bank on, and after reading some of the information about this TOKEN feature, I am led to believe that this feature involves some type of physical item, which naturally won't be sent by the Commonwealth Bank to China.

I have sent many enquiries through my Commonwealth Bank Secure Netbank Service, but the staff have been unhelpful, and even registering a complaint through the 'complaints' section didn't help because it was not replied to. (Ref. No.168843807)

As I sit in China, I have pondered the events which have led to writing this letter today, and the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that Commonwealth Bank staff are either/or and maybe all of the following:

Malicious: I made a complaint; got a refund of a late fee, and then promptly had my credit card disconnected based on the claim that it was flagged as having a 'suspicious' transaction. Bank staff spoke to my sister in Australia (what happened to your privacy policy?) and told her that they were investigating a transaction that took place in America.

Incompetent: There was a transaction that took place in America, as it does every year at that time, but it was a month earlier than when the transaction was flagged by your staff as suspicious. I certainly made no complaint to them about the transaction, so how come it took so long for your competent staff to notice this 'suspicious transaction'? Is it just a coincidence that they took my credit card offline immediately after a complaint and subsequent refund of an overcharge?

Untrustworthy: The email contact service within Commonwealth Secure Netbank is extremely unhelpful and I have been told that I must use a land line to contact the bank. I don't have one and personally know no one who does. Will you pay the cost of having one installed in my apartment so that I can call your bank? Your Staff tell me that they cannot discuss my Commonwealth Bank account with me through the Commonwealth Bank Netbank system. Is this because your Commonwealth Bank Netbank system is actually insecure? Or is it that your staff dealing with this section are untrustworthy?

Outsourced: I find it difficult to believe that you don't trust your Commonwealth Bank staff and think it absolutely shocking that my communications with the Commonwealth bank through my Commonwealth Bank secure netbank are not secure. I can only assume that the Commonwealth bank is practicing some kind of fraud on the general public, or that the staff contacted through the Commonwealth Bank secure netbank are not regular staff but 'outsourced' services and that the personnel are actually located in places like India, China, Vietnam or some place other than Australia. Naturally you don't want them having access to 'my' private details.

From what I have read today about your TOKEN whatever, it must cause quite some problems for those of us overseas. Maybe I am wrong, but I have yet to get to first base on that issue.

So Dear Mr. CEO of the Commonwealth Bank Australia: The Commonwealth Bank has made it impossible for me to pay my credit card (forget about using it). So please be advised that since it is the Commonwealth Bank that is making it impossible for me to pay off the debt, that debt will have to remain until my feet once again touch Australian Soil and during that time of course, should you charge me fees of any kind, then I shall seek recompense in a court of law.

You and your staff are welcome to contact me at either of the two email addresses that I provided through the Commonwealth Bank Secure Netbank service (you can confirm them with my sister on the home phone number in my records), but your own 'anally retentive' system won't permit that, because I have only one registered email address with your Commonwealth Bank Secure Netbank service and that is at kingscalendar.com - an account I have not been able to access since returning to China last year.

I have had my card for many years and this is the first year that I have not paid off credit card purchases within 5 minutes of making transactions. I never had any problems with my credit card until YOU DECIDED to make it secure. Now it is SO secure that I can't even pay it off!

I guess in the final analysis, it doesn't matter whether your staff are idiots, malicious, incompetent, outsourced or untrustworthy. The only important thing is 'How big will your bonus be this year?'

Have a Merry Christmas Sir!

R.P. DEECKE
Email:rpbendedek@hotmail.com

P.S. I realise that your bank is very big and I am nothing more than an annoying gnat, but as A Taiwanese Company in China discovered, when my ire is up, I won't 'give up'!

I am currently writing a more indepth analysis of the Operation Methodology of the Commonwealth Bank and comparing it with Western perceptions of totalitarian governments such as the Communist Government of China.

CBA's CEO Ian Narev's Asian Dream (Jan 13, 2012)

How will the Asian community view a bank which operates using minimal and/or outsourced staff, whose only incentives are related to how much the bank can charge the customer, and whose operational procedures tie them up in the law of unintended consequences, but without the power, authority or incentive to correct the flaws of the laws?

R.P.BenDedek is the Author of 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran' and a guest columnist and stand-in Editor at Magic City Morning Star News. He has been teaching Conversational English in China since 2003

Writers Journal Kingscalendar

"The King's Calendar", is a chronological study of the historical books of the Bible (Kings and Chronicles), Josephus, Seder Olam Rabbah, and the (Essene) Damascus Document of The Dead Sea Scrolls. See Chapter Precis page.