At least Sparkasse is consistent with their asinine policies.

My good friend Alex and first ever guest on the Lernen to Talk Show shares his thoughts on Sparkasse. Sounds pretty familiar. Therein Alex sheds light on a problem that I two days ago discovered I too had. I attempted to log in to my online banking for the first time in order to return a 400 euro damage deposit that had been mistakenly deposited in my account, when I was met with this message, but in German: ACCOUNT HAS BEEN BLOCKED FOR SOME REASON. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR BANKER. It was in fact my banker who had just ten minutes earlier told me to use online banking to execute the transfer. Maybe that would have been a good time to warn me that it wouldn’t work until she allowed it to work. I promptly called her back, waited five minutes for her to pick up the phone, called again, was not answered, curled up in a corner and wept.