I’ve been with your bank for a long time. Decades, in fact. I’ve got several accounts with you, a credit card through you guys and even a mortgage.

But I don’t need to tell you all this because I think you already know. Because I got a letter from you a few days ago. 

It was a letter headed “we’re saying thanks .. where it counts”. A letter that talked about how I was such a good customer.

“You’ve been a customer with us for a while now,” you wrote with a nice touch of understatement, “and we think that deserves a little recognition”.

This got me a bit excited, I have to tell you, because it sounded like I was going to get some free stuff. And I love getting free stuff.

I grabbed the envelope the letter came in, turned it upside down and shook it – but nothing came out.

Okay, I thought, maybe this freebie isn’t a tangible thing. Perhaps I better read on and see if the letter can illuminate me.

And it could – my reward for being such a great customer was…. wait for it … a new credit card with a credit limit more than seven times what I have now.

Let’s face it. That’s really a present for you, isn’t it? If I buy more things on my card with that enormous credit limit, you earn loads more money by charging me interest.

You earn money while I get into debt – that’s a terrible present.

If you really wanted to “say thanks where it counts” as the top of this letter states, then maybe you’d give me something I want. 

Maybe you could pay off my credit card – that’d be nice. Or perhaps drop my home loan by $1000. But you won’t do that, will you?

Because that would leave you out of pocket, and I’m thinking you don’t like those sorts of presents.

Yours disappointedly,

Glen