I have decided I hate the Bank of Montreal.
A year and a half ago I got my mortgage through them. I did a few comparisons, and there wasn’t a reason not to go with them. The reason to go with them was that I had collected an obscene amount of FirstHome Dollars on my credit card. I haven’t had any major problems with them.
But the thing is that I pay attention to details. Almost at the anal-retentive level. Whenever I get a bank or investment statement, I enter it into the computer so I can track what is going on with my money. There could be better hobbies, but you are stuck with who you are. Most institutes give me monthly updates, or at the very least a quarterly statement which will tell me what was deposited and what was earned.
But Bank of Montreal has decided that I only need a brief summary once a year. And when I say brief, I don’t think it is possible for them to get briefer without giving me a blank piece of paper.
This annoys me.
Last year, it wasn’t a problem. The nice people at the branch went through their records and printed out what they had. It looked horrible, with formatting more like a DOS prompt than anything else (I think they just took a series of screen shots), but it had all the information and I was happy. I could tell exactly how much I was putting towards the mortgage, and how much towards the interest.
Today I deposited a large amount of money towards said mortgage, and I hoped to get the same information sheets. I was politely told that that was against policy. They could be fired if they gave that information out. She then proceeded to show me how to calculate everything I need, which would give me number CLOSE to my interest payment.
This isn’t a national secret! This is my money! Do they have something to hide? I’ve been simmering all afternoon over this. I’m going to complain to the bank, and I am seriously thinking of transferring my mortgage to another institute. Would anyone put up with that level of information if it was a checking account?
Of course if I close up my mortgage, I will have to be vindictive and close up my RRSPs with them too. Hopefully that will put more weight towards my threats.