Saeed was recently relating to me a bizarre sequence of events in the field of commerce and his frustrations at the inadequacy of the system to solve them. On March 15 of this year, he had gone to a leading bank and wired some money to his account in a bank in the US. There were certain monthly financial obligations to be dispensed with, and a few days after this transaction was carried out, he wrote checks against this overseas account and dutifully mailed them to various creditors.

Three weeks later, the bank in Anytown, USA advised him that they were receiving checks for processing against his account, but there were insufficient funds. They had no recourse but to mail them back and slap him with a $40 overdraft fee for every check returned unpaid. Furthermore, overseas phone call charges were going to be debited against his account. Saeed was not amused. Hadn’t his last wire transfer arrived? No, there had been no recent credits to his account, the branch manager assured him.

Concerned and irritated at those jabs of $40 fines, Saeed made his way first thing to the local bank, to speak to the branch manager. After explaining his dilemma to the manager, Saeed was perturbed by the casual attitude of the individual, who said he would look into it. The bank would send a telex to their corresponding bank in New York to run a trace.

Three more days passed, more checks were arriving at his bank to be paid, more were being returned, and $40 was being slapped for every rejection.

Frustrated, he made his way back to the same branch again, and confronted the branch manager more determinedly. Once again, the classic runaround whereby the manager informed him that New York had still not responded to the telex.

Why not pick a phone and talk to your corresponding branch, Saeed charged. After all, in this day and age of blazing speed communications, telexes were slightly archaic. “Oh, that would be against company policy” was the reply.

As Saeed continued in his futile attempts to explain his dilemma to the branch manager, the response was that it was out of his hands, the fault being with the head office! Saeed countered. “And what do I have to do with it. I brought my money here at this branch, and paid you a hefty service charge to send it to my account”, ignoring the suggestions of the branch manager to go to the head office at a great inconvenience to himself, and seek answers to his questions. Thirty-seven days had passed, and the money was still floating somewhere with no explanation, and no concerned ear to be found.

With some indignation, the manager pointed out to the fine print on the back of the wire transfer request. In essence it stated that the bank was not liable for failure or negligence to provide the service, and any delay or inconvenience would have to be shouldered by the customer.

The small writing on the back absolved this individual’s lack of activity. Haven’t we all heard this sometimes before?

After three more annoying weeks the money was finally traced to having been deposited to a wrong account at a wrong bank, and the fault was corrected. The mistake was cast upon the shoulders of a poor Asian clerk at the head office who had sent the original telex.

It’s always the poor little Asian who’s at fault, isn’t it?

What about a consumer protection agency or a better business bureau, Saeed wondered as I expressed my joy to him on his dilemma being finally solved, albeit with penalties imposed on his account of well over $600 and the ire of his US bank.

That, I assured Saeed, still remains an alien notion.