Reflections on Vancouver, British Columbia and other topics, related or not
Is our money safe?
CIBC has become dysfunctional.
The bank might typify other Canadian institutions
Greg Klein | February 20, 2026
The bank registers clients’ money with the
Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation, we hope.
CDIC functions better than CIBC, we also hope.
Lacking faith in the emperor’s new technology, I shun crypto-currencies. After seeing previous crashes in bullion prices, I avoid gold and silver. Having held a marginal role on the very margins of mining industry marginality, I see less opportunity than absurdity in the stock market. For me, personal real estate’s no reality and, closer as I am to Dollarama than Sotheby’s or Christie’s, so are antiques, jewelry and fine art.
As depthless apathy further inhibits financial acumen, I keep my declining funds in sub-inflation-rate CIBC GICs. But even this simplistic “savings” strategy has become unwieldy—and in a way that raises much broader concerns.
The GICs mature at different times each year. So at different times I try to re-“invest” them at the least-pathetic rates CIBC offers, sometimes while redeeming part of the funds. That once-simple process has become a frustrating, time-consuming exercise that’s getting scary.
In one example, CIBC’s website lowered the interest rate when I reached the last step of buying a new GIC. I went back to the first step, saw the higher interest rate was still available, and repeated the process only to re-experience the unexplained rate reduction. A third effort brought the same result.
Phone calls to CIBC were futile. Most CIBC call centre operators can’t even handle routine GIC transactions. A supervisor once told me they should be competent to do so. In my experience, most aren’t.
On another occasion, a call centre staffer told me to deal with the GICs in person at a CIBC branch office. So I made an appointment and was given a confirmation number for the meeting. When I showed up, however, branch staff said they had no record of my appointment.
They assigned an employee to deal with me anyway. What used to be a simple online client-handled transaction took her about 45 minutes to complete. Twice she had to leave her office and bring back a superior to guide her through the next steps.
This is the same branch that twice screwed up my foreign currency purchases. On the first occasion, the bank’s step-by-step serial incompetence prompted me to phone the branch manager. She didn’t answer my voice mail message. So I wrote to CIBC’s complaint department through an e-mail address provided by the bank’s website.
In response, via voice mail, an extremely angry black woman told me she does not accept e-mails. On her vociferous orders I phoned her to relay the concern. My call went to voice mail, which she never answered.
The malaise intensifies. CIBC has recently blocked me from online banking. When logging in, I should get a verification code sent to my phone. Instead I now get a recorded message saying: “CIBC has called you for requested information.” That’s all it says.
CIBC hasn’t called me for any info. The one-sentence message gives no instructions on what to do next. This has happened multiple times over approximately six weeks.
That’s except for one occasion last month, when for some reason I did receive a verification code. Once into my account, however, I saw my GIC info was missing. Almost my entire savings were—are—missing.
I sure do hope that’s temporary.
Lengthy, time-consuming, wait-on-hold calls to CIBC eventually brought the attention of a “client care case manager,” who helpfully sent me an e-mail with his phone number. On trying to call him, however, I kept getting a message saying his four-digit extension number was invalid.
This is an alternative?
Assuming I’d eventually retrieve my savings, I tentatively planned moving them to BMO, which I also deal with. But on phoning their call centre last month to ask about an extra charge on my account, I was told the bank locked me out of phone service until I came into a branch and presented two pieces of ID. The call centre operator and branch teller gave me contradictory reasons for this imposition. Neither reason made sense.
Prior to self-sedation, I e-mailed BMO’s resolution office. A “specialist” replied by e-mail, asking me to phone her at either of two numbers. It turns out that the first number “cannot be completed as dialed.” The second brings a high-pitched ringing noise like a fax machine. So I e-mailed the specialist. She hasn’t answered.
CIBC’s case manager did phone me after I e-mailed him about the faulty extension number. He initially seemed to prevaricate about the extension malfunction before acknowledging the “glitch.” On consulting with the bank’s tech department about the log-in mystery, he asked if I’d made changes to my phone service. I hadn’t, but Telus might have.
A company that struggles to provide basic
phone service wants to automate our homes.
Last month the company inexplicably locked me out of long-distance calls. After one of those time-means-nothing durations involving at least one “call-drop” (a common problem with the phone company’s in-house phone system), someone supposedly restored my long-distance service. Just maybe some—certainly not all—of this weird banking shit might result from Telus-induced phone malfunction.
That leaves my savings as an existential question. If they still exist, where are they? Where, but in digital records held by a dysfunctional financial institution and stored on unreliable communications infrastructure?