Due to popular (ie one) demand

THE LETTER

Kia ora koutou,

For those of you currently (or thinking of) banking with the [INSERT BANK NAME HERE], I thought I’d bring to your attention to an important fact:

[INSERT BANK NAME HERE] needs to know, in advance, if you are going on holiday outside of Bahrain.

If you fail to do so, then do something so rash as use your ATM card (at an [INSERT BANK NAME HERE] ATM no less) overseas, you may find that your card is cancelled. To be fair, they will try and call you to confirm that this person using your card, with your PIN, is in fact you; but should they be unable to contact you (say, because you are out of the country) they will assume your card has been stolen (without waiting for you to inform them of this) and put a hold on it.

Walking into an [INSERT BANK NAME HERE] branch with card in hand, thus (one would think) proving its essential unstolenness, will NOT be a sufficient prompt for them to unblock your card, and a two week (so far) saga of “don’t call us we’ll call you, tomorrow, we promise” will ensue.

To update you all on this fascinating tale of intrigue, today I went into [INSERT BANK NAME HERE] to close my account and I think I just about made a grown man cry. Such is the nature of the Current Economic Climate™.