I’ve written before about the fun I’ve had dealing with the Very Big Banking Corporation (VBBC, not their real name) and their “interactive” voice response system.

Between that event and one other (they started charging me $15 to pay my bill by phone, which I do, or rather, did up to then, twice a month), I have begun the process of transitioning my accounts from VBBC to Very Small Federal Credit Union (VSFCU, not their real name, either) .

Last week, I got a message on my home phone from VBBC that they had something important to talk to me about, and they gave me a “reference number” and a phone number to call them back.

…so I called them back, and got dropped into their infamous IVR system. “Thank you for calling VBBC card services. Para español, oprime el dos. Please enter the last four digits of your account number.”

Well, there’s the rub. I have a chequing account, savings account, two credit cards, two installment loans, two debit cards (one replacing the other after the recent Hannaford data breach), an ATM card, etc, all with different numbers on them. What are they wanting to talk about? I have no bloody clue, so I enter “0000″

“The account was not recognized. Please enter your full sixteen-digit account number.”

Okay, that ruled out four of the accounts, but I still don’t know which one they wanted to talk about. I enter “0000000000000000″

“The account was not recognized. Please enter your full sixteen-digit account number.”

Huh. “0000000000000000″. I would hope that they would have programmed this thing to give up eventually.

“One moment, please. Your call will be taken by the next available operator. Please note, this call may be monitored or recorded for training purposes.” Hold music plays for about ten seconds, followed by a British-style phone ring.

The fellow who then answered the phone had no idea what a reference number was, so we iterated through all of my accounts to find . . . nothing.

I still have no bloody clue what they wanted.

When I call VSFCU, on the other hand, the person who answers the phone (there is no IVR or call queue) can get answers for me right then and there. If there is a question about what was needed, she (usually it’s a woman) can call across the room to someone else to get find out what to look up. It’s all of the charm of doing business with the corner mom and pop store.

Almost. There’s one thing better. The corner mom and pop stores usually cost a little more than the big box stores; the credit union costs a lot less to do business with. I think I’m going to like it here.