Good (I hope) things

First, I know you've all been anxiously awaiting a roof update. Well, it should be finished by now. They stripped off all the old stuff a couple days ago and then yesterday they replaced some bad decking, installed 3 "TVA vents", and managed to get new shingles on about half the house. As they were leaving yesterday afternoon, Johnny told me they'd be back this morning to FINISH UP! I may be a sucker, but I actually believe it will be finished today. Honestly, I'd think they'd have found any problems yesterday when they were replacing decking. Still, I'm not going to rest easy until I know that it is, in fact, finished. Of course I call this good news now, but I'm not going to be so happy when I have to write that check (hopefully) this afternoon. Sigh.

Speaking of writing checks, I want to brag on my bank, Wachovia. I know I normally use this bully pulpit to complain about folks who have wronged me, but I want to take the opportunity praise my bank. When I first moved to Decatur, I bought my house with a loan from SouthTrust Mortgage. Hence, I figured the easiest thing to do would be to do my banking with them. Shortly after opening my accounts, though, SouthTrust got eaten up by Wachovia -- a giant bank. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, but the local face of the bank hasn't changed much. A couple of recent events, though, have led me to a new appreciation of Wachovia Bank, N.A.

First, a Wachovia rep (Jo) tried and tried to get me to come into the bank and talk to her. What was the issue? I wasn't getting the most out of my "assets". I had a line of credit that they could rework to get me a better interest rate and I had too much money just sitting in my checking account, barely earning any interest at all. I appreciated the fact that they put that much effort into something that seemed to benefit me more than them.

The nicest surprise, though, came when I went in to order some new checks. Given that my bank and account number has changed, I figured I couldn't just use my check reorder form. The last time I was in there, I asked if they could order the checks for me and, sure enough, it wasn't a problem. The teller (Jo, again) told me to call them if I didn't get the checks within two weeks. Given the holiday mail disruptions I wasn't just sitting on the mailbox every day, but it turned out they did show up within the predicted time frame. I thought that was the end of the story, but Monday afternoon I got a call from my local branch, asking if I'd received my new checks. I just thought that was right nice of them. I'm sure they have a procedure where they log the date of order and then automatically place a follow through call later, so I'm not so deluded as to think they were doing this especially for me. Still, I thought that was a nice extra touch, something they didn't really have to do.

Anyway, it's so rare that a corporation does something that unexpectedly surprises me, I thought I should give them their due. Plus, I may need them if there is a roofing "surprise". Keep your fingers crossed for me.