A nonsense!

The previous owner of of our beautiful peninsula home left us a number of unwanted gifts of the variety that keep on giving! Quite enough has already been said on the matter of sun-rooms, law suits and heart-stopping contractors’ invoices and I promise that no further mention will be made thereof. There is one other (very minor but most irritating none-the-less) ghost-like and continuing reminder of the past.

We did not actually ever meet the old lady (who shall remain nameless). All of our dealings went through her whack-job of a realtor. We do know that we she moved to Vancouver, but we know not where or even if she still inhabits that other place. She and her (deceased) husband clearly at some stage had a small bank account with the CIBC. We know this because we still receive – through the post –  monthly statements addressed to the departed owners.

Now – I am a patient soul and quite capable of playing the long game. For the last two and a half years I have been marking the envelopes “Return to Sender” and popping them back in the post box. Towards the end of last year, however, I finally got a bit fed up with this rigmarole.

I called CIBC…

As seems so prevalent these days with customer service departments the world across the conversation did not go well and, sad to report, satisfaction was not to be had. Apparently the only way of stopping these statements is for the account holders themselves to write to the CIBC to request such. I enquired of the young man who was not helping me what might be the outcome should the elderly person concerned have expired in the meantime. He was no help with that query either.

I have no means of contacting the vendor and am certainly not prepared to go to any great length trying so to do. I returned instead to my previous course of action. Then – a couple of weeks  ago – one of the envelopes that I had inscribed reappeared in our post box. Unimpressed I added a further curt missive and pushed it back into the post box.

Two days later it was back again!

I visited the post office. They informed me (most politely) that had I just crossed through the address and written “Moved” upon the envelope they would have been obliged to return it to the sender. Clearly adding more invective gave them an excuse to abrogate their responsbilities

Now – this is all very irritating and one begins to marvel at the dogged determination that all concerned have shown in generating an entirely wasted sheet of paper, stuffing it in an envelope, paying postage to send it across Canada – only for it to be sent back via the same route presumably to be simply shredded (one hopes!) and thrown in the recycling back at the bank.

This sort of situation simply must arise all the time. I find it hard to believe that no remedy can be devised for such madness…

Bah – say I!