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zerocd
Penny Hoarding Member
555 Posts |
 Posted - 07/19/2010 : 06:13:18
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Taking Possession of your Silver? Check this out.
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In the end, nothing else would do for Scotiabank but that Amar Patel – 73 years old, bald from chemotherapy, in the throes of metastatic breast cancer – should drag her aching bones down to the bank’s head office in downtown Toronto.
The trip from her airy apartment above the Indian Rice Factory, the landmark restaurant she founded in 1970 and has run ever since, was an agony of no fewer than five transfers – from the hospital bed in her living room to a commode, from commode to the chair lift for the first set of stairs, from that chair to the next chair lift for the second set, from that chair to a walker, from walker to the car.
This exercise took 59 minutes and the best efforts of her son Aman, daughter-in-law Deepa and restaurant employee Chandan Sindhwal.
I should note that despite her illness and pain, Mrs. Patel, who hadn’t been out of the apartment for almost two months, was gracious, beautiful in a red-striped caftan and, but for occasional moans when the car hit a rough patch of road, remarkably uncomplaining.
All she wanted was to do was take delivery of the silver the bank was holding for her in the form of the certificates she’d bought decades earlier.
It was, or ought to have been, an uncomplicated transaction.
Another major financial institution, TD Bank, managed to handle the same transaction within a couple of days, and delivered the bullion to Mrs. Patel’s local branch for pickup.
By this Thursday, Mrs. Patel had done the following to obtain Scotiabank’s agreement to give her what is rightfully hers:
In early March, Aman, a Toronto criminal lawyer, had attended the downtown headquarters to explain his mom’s situation. He suggested that either a bank official go to her apartment to witness her signature (he even offered to pick up and drive back the official) or consider meeting his mother in the car outside the bank to save her a bit of the journey: Both requests were rejected.
On March 17, Aman faxed the silver certificates to his mom’s local Scotiabank branch and then drove his mother there; they were advised she would have to attend the King/Bay office downtown.
For a time, Mrs. Patel gave up; she was hoping she could tackle it in a few weeks or months, when she was better and had her strength back.
When that didn’t happen, she hired a Bay Street lawyer and, through him, signed a power of attorney appointing Aman as her attorney.
In early July, Scotiabank asked first to “pre-inspect” the POA, then demanded the original; then pronounced it unacceptable because it wasn’t sealed; then insisted that a notarized copy, with covering letter from the lawyer, be produced; finally, the notarized POA had to be submitted to the home branch, then the bank’s legal department.
Even with these various approvals finally in place, Aman was told (being a lawyer, he has notes of all these conversations and e-mails) that the bank could still deny the transaction if it was deemed not to be in Mrs. Patel’s “best interest.”
So she hired another lawyer, this time to help her get what was hers.
Then the bank said it had to decide if the transaction was to be for the benefit of the attorney, from a business point of view. In other words, Scotiabank would decide if the transaction made business sense – not Mrs. Patel, or her lawyer, or Aman, who had her POA.
This Thursday, having heard nothing from the bank about whether it would honour the now-approved and vetted POA, Aman called and got Judy McBride, the head of customer service at King and Bay Streets. She told him the bank would not honour the POA, and that Mrs. Patel had to come down in person.
Aman again explained how weak his mother was, to no avail.
That afternoon, Aman, his wife and Chandan managed to carry out the five transfers and get Mrs. Patel in the car.
Once they arrived downtown, Aman went in to ask, one last time, if Scotiabank would at least dispatch people outside to do the signing in the car; absolutely not, came the answer.
They got Mrs. Patel into the commode chair and into the lovely, high-ceilinged headquarters with its polished marble floors they went.
Ms. McBride asked a number of questions, in my presence. Among them, “Do you understand what this transaction is that is taking place? We’re taking your certificates and giving you the actual bullion? Why would you want to do that? It’s more difficult for you to cart around.”
At this point, Aman’s seemingly endless store of patience was exhausted and he said, mildly I thought in the circumstances, “That’s none of your business.”
Ms. McBride said that it was, that “simply putting a POA in place doesn’t give carte blanche,” that the bank had a responsibility too, and asked Mrs. Patel, “Why would you need the physical metal?”
Ms. McBride said the bank “reserves a right to ask questions” because, she said, “We need a comfort level.”
Bank spokesman Joe Konecny denied the bank ever insisted Mrs. Patel had to come in person, said they were “willing to act” on the POA, but that “a heightened level of due diligence was required for a number of reasons,” among them, bizarrely, that the transaction wasn’t initiated at her home branch, although that branch had directed her downtown.
In any case, after about an hour, Mrs. Patel finally got her silver.
But it must have been a mortifying experience for this very dignified woman to make such a trip in her bedclothes, and the whole thing struck me as a profoundly condescending and arbitrary intrusion of bank functionaries into Mrs. Patel’s and her family’s business. And what if her son wasn’t a lawyer who knew how to fight back? What if she’d had a stroke and wasn’t able to sign the documents?
If she wanted to buy crack cocaine with that silver, or sleep with it at her side, that’s her call, because it belongs to her, not the bank. The bully-boy functionaries might want to find a comfort level around that notion.
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wayne1956
Penny Pincher Member
177 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2010 : 09:55:42
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| Precisely why I only deal in physical silver. Will never deal with paper. |
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Kiwiman
Penny Pincher Member
225 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2010 : 10:35:45
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quote:
Originally posted by wayne1956
Precisely why I only deal in physical silver. Will never deal with paper.
same here, it is sad what the bank did |
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psi
Penny Collector Member
Canada
399 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2010 : 11:16:08
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I've read elsewhere that scotia will do whatever they can to get you to take cash instead of physical PM's as they claim is possible when you buy. The illogic of beaurocracy really is just as surreal as the stories of Kafka and George Orwell, and the big banks seem to think their word is law.
Scotiabank isn't somewhere you'd go these days for metals unless you really haven't done the research and looked at the fine print, but I'd like to know how the policies have changed since she purchased her certificates. Interesting to hear TD gave her no problems though, they seem to be the best out of the bad options available here for full service banking. It's too bad that the woman in the story shelled out money for a lawyer to get what she paid the bank for, that money should be recoverable in a civil suit but we all know that's not happening.
I have seen Christie Blatchford in person before near toronto's main courthouse, she used to work at a low-brow tabloid and worked her way up to the national papers. She has done a lot of crime coverage and human interest stories like this. In a lot of articles she seems to take a simplistic conclusion early on in her research and gloss over the rest of the facts, but this one seems fairly informative as they go. |
Edited by - psi on 07/19/2010 11:21:13 |
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Kiwiman
Penny Pincher Member
225 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2010 : 12:15:56
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| I wonder how much silver she got |
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Nickelmeister
Penny Hoarding Member
Canada
588 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2010 : 12:20:13
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| I once tried to purchase bullion through Scotiabank (not redeem certificated, just simply purchase coins) before I became a dealer myself and I was treated like a terrorist. They advertise that they sell bullion, but heaven forbid anyone try to actually buy any!! My case was escalated to the general manager, as I was pretty vocal about the way in which I was being handled. Ultimately it was a total excercise in futility. They simply have ZERO interest in selling gold and silver, despite their claims. |
www.WinnipegGoldBuyer.com
Standing offer for sale of quality, second-hand solid gold jewellery:
<$100 USD worth - spot +25%, plus actual shipping
$101-500 worth - spot +20%, plus actual shipping
$501-1,000 worth - spot +15%, plus actual shipping
$1,001+ worth - spot +10%, plus actual shipping |
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beauanderos
1000+ Penny Miser Member
USA
2408 Posts |
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Hirbonzig
Penny Collector Member
USA
451 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2010 : 12:45:20
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| I'm glad she got her silver! Banks like Scotiabank will try to make it very difficult to take physical control of PM's. She deserves to get what is rightfully hers without a bunch of BS from the banks! |
Edited by - Hirbonzig on 07/19/2010 12:46:31 |
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jtlee321
Penny Pincher Member
USA
136 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2010 : 13:43:21
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It's simple really.. They have to try like hell to prevent physical delivery. If everyone took physical delivery then the jig is up and it will be revealed that the Wizard is just a man behind a curtain pulling levers and pushing buttons. The whole paper exchange would tumble down and there would be anarchy because people will realize that they have been duped into investing into something that does not exist. Empty promises is all you should expect, unless you are one of the few who happen to demand delivery early enough.
I am glad she was able to get what was her's. I am just appalled that it took that much effort and money to get what is hers. And for the bank to declare that they have the right to refuse to deliver if "They" don't think it is in the customers best interest? Isn't there something monumentally wrong with that sentiment?
Don't ever buy paper unless that is all you ever expect to get back. As Forrest Gump would say "That's all I have to say about that". |
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beauanderos
1000+ Penny Miser Member
USA
2408 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2010 : 14:02:57
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When people wake up to what's going on it'll be like musical chairs for those trying to redeem worthless certificates for tangible metal... only there will be 100 contestants trying to sit in one chair. Better sit your butt down now and claim your silver before it gets even more difficult than this story suggests!  |
Hoard now and hold on!
http://coppermillions.blogspot.com/
http://wherewillyoubein2012.blogspot.com/ |
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AGgressive Metal
Administrator
USA
1937 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2010 : 14:49:23
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| My guess is that this was a wealthy lady who had bought a lot of silver at low prices in the 70s and Scotiabank needed to give themselves time to acquire sufficient physical bullion since they are only fractionally backed at best. There was an interview on King World News with a man who has actual been in the ScotiaBank vault and he said there is only a few hundred ounce bars of physical silver (or something like that - I'd have to go back and listen again, but the point was that it wasn't very much at all). |
And he that hath lyberte ought to kepe hit wel / For nothyng is better than lyberte / For lyberte shold not be wel sold for alle the gold and syluer of all the world.
-Caxton's edition of Aesop's Fables, 1484 |
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Oldpagan
Penny Sorter Member
USA
62 Posts |
Posted - 07/19/2010 : 14:52:44
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quote:
Originally posted by AGgressive Metal
There was an interview on King World News with a man who has actual been in the ScotiaBank vault and he said there is only a few hundred ounce bars of physical silver (or something like that - I'd have to go back and listen again, but the point was that it wasn't very much at all).
I am willing to bet most banks are like that if they have any at all. |
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The Elderly Woman and The Bank
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