Weird stuff happens and sometimes throws me for a loop. Today it has to do with a bank, which itself is not unusual. I’ve had the same bank account with the Royal Bank for over ten years now. About four years ago, President’s Choice Financial lured me away with their promise of higher interest rates and next to no service charges. They delivered on both promises, but they also delivered all manner of headaches so I left them three years ago.

I haven’t touched the account since. It occurred to me I really ought to close the account and finish things up. That was especially true since I was pretty sure there was a negative balance. Not a big one, but those things have a bad habit of growing!

So after I found my bank card, I tried logging into my account unsuccessfully via their web site. The next step was calling. While it was not something I was looking forward to, I went ahead because I wanted to close the account and be done with it. So I called up, and after ten minutes on hold, reached a person. My password information didn’t match. He asked me a bunch of questions to confirm my identity and when I answered correctly, he put me on hold to pull up my file.

This is the weird part. He came back on the line and told me my account had been closed due to inactivity. There was a balance of –$81 but they’d written that off as a loss and the episode was closed. I thanked him and we were done. Ironically, he thanked me for doing business with President’s Choice Financial before severing the connection.

My phone number, postal address, and e‑mail address are the same as they were the whole time I dealt with them. Certainly they won’t leave an inactive account open forever, but I’d expect some sort of contact if I owed them money, even if just a letter.

A bank let money slip out of their hands without even trying? Now that’s weird!