[A copy for your edification and amusement. No. Actually, it's just a more 
convenient editor before cutting-and-pasting to the webform. But feel free 
to knock yourselves out. You always do.]

I am not going to apologize for writing in English. In fact, my experiences 
with your company over the years have consistently been one of the strongest 
justifications for giving up on any attempt to use Japanese. That I continue 
to study the language is certainly no thanks to you--but you've certainly 
reduced my enthusiasm for study and done everything you could possibly do to 
make it seem pointless. I just have to laugh when anyone mentions your 
company in any 'international' context, in spite of your pretensions. I 
don't even care if there is anyone there who can read beyond "I want to pay 
you your money." That's the only point you really need to understand.

At this time, my primary concern is to make sure you get paid every yen you 
are due. A secondary concern is to state clearly and for the record that I 
regard this entire incident as *YOUR* fault, and if I find out that you are 
playing any revengeful games, like trying to poison my financial history, I 
will not tolerate it, but will act to defend my reputation. I (obviously) 
think it is *YOUR* reputation that needs the defending.

I think we need to start with a bit of background of my dealings with your 
company. Now I already know you're going to say it's really a different 
company. Oh. So why do you use the same name? Sorry, but from *MY* 
perspective as the customer I see every company with the name of 三井住友 
(SMBC in English) as being part of the same entity. If you don't want to 
share their reputation, good and bad, then you should use a different name. 
Actually, considering how bad I think your reputation is, I'm kind of amazed 
that any of your shells and affiliates use the name in public. Seeing that 
logo, I certainly regard it as a significant reason not to do business with 
that company, but we'll come back to that soon...

Ancient history: I've been a customer of your bank for many years. That was 
not actually my free decision. Many years later I found out it was actually 
illegal for you to "strongly recommend" (= "secretly require") companies to 
insist on paying their employees through your bank. It was just one of those 
'understandings' as part of other financing, but the consequence was that my 
employer strongly recommended that I do business with you, even though I had 
been using a different bank and was (and remain) basically satisfied with 
that bank. I actually recall it as insistence. Congratulations on having 
obtained my business. NOT.

I also want to put your bank into the broader context. As just noted, yours 
is not the Japanese bank with which I have done business for the longest 
time, nor is it the bank with which I do the most business now. When I first 
came to Japan, I worked for a different company, and they strongly 
recommended I do business with a different bank. (Just the unethical 
Japanese way of banking?) Considering that I've had very few problems with 
that bank over the years, you'd think they would be my primary bank, but 
unfortunately they have relatively few locations. Also, for the routine 
services I use on a weekly basis, their service is substantially the same as 
yours. Primarily by 'virtue' of having swallowed a large number of smaller 
banks, you simply have the advantage in convenience of more cash card 
machines.

My problems with your bank mostly involved paperwork. (The cash card 
machines have always seemed to like me.) Right from the beginning, it became 
pretty clear that it was virtually impossible for me to prepare paperwork to 
your satisfaction. Each form always had to be done two or three times until 
you were satisfied. It didn't matter how simple the form was, nor how 
carefully I had prepared it. Sometimes I asked a Japanese person to review 
the form before submitting it, just to see if they could see any problems. 
None of this mattered. There was always something wrong and it was always 
necessary for me to do the paperwork two or three times before it would be 
accepted. In contrast to other banks and agencies, your bank would 
apparently not even accept corrections, but insisted on completely fresh 
paper. I made some adjustments. First, I tried to minimize the paperwork at 
your bank. I now use your bank almost solely for cash card transactions. 
Second, all new automatic deposits and payments were set up with a different 
bank (and I live in dread of the day when I must cancel the ones that are 
still at your bank, since that will require filling in forms). Finally, 
whenever any form did need to be filled out for your bank, I insisted on 
being carefully 'walked through' the form by one of your employees. By doing 
the form as directed on an almost letter-by-letter basis, there was a better 
chance the employee in question would accept it. After all, the form was 
practically the employee's own work by that point.

Sometimes I speculated about the possible reasons for these problems. For 
example, I considered whether or not it might be a racist policy to get rid 
of foreign customers. Just a bunch of annoying troublemakers? [This long 
letter is certainly evidence of that!] Or maybe it was more personal? 
Perhaps one of your bankers had entered a code on my records to indicate 
that this customer has trouble with forms and that all of his paperwork 
needs to be checked very carefully? Maybe that warning is the first thing 
your employees see whenever they pull up my records? However, my carefully 
considered opinion is that it actually reflects your personnel policies. I 
think your strong preference is to hire a certain kind of obedient drone, a 
person who has no imagination or flexibility and who is completely unable to 
deal with the smallest deviations from precise expectations. I think you 
also have a rule against corrected forms.

Today's [admittedly discursive] joke is that in my most recent visit to your 
bank [We're eventually going to get there. Be patient.] I noticed that your 
banking computer system is apparently called something like the 'workflow 
innovation system'. It was prominently visible in (yo-ho-ho) English on a 
terminal off to the side. I would certainly agree that I've never seen a 
company more in need of innovation than yours--but I also think you've 
carefully built a workforce that is utterly incapable of innovative 
behavior. Congratulations. NOT.

This most recent business with your corporation actually involves a credit 
card you issued to me. I don't blame the bookstore employee who encouraged 
me to apply for it, so I'm not going to finger the bookstore here. It was a 
big campaign at the store, I buy too many books, he spoke excellent English, 
and his discount book pitch finally overcame my resistance. When I 
discovered it involved your company, I almost wised up enough to run away, 
but sadly for all of us, I did not. Actually, part of the persuasive sales 
pitch was the appearance of one of your employees who was assisting with the 
campaign. My (yo-ho-ho) theory was that he would walk me through the form 
and there would be no problem. Actually, apart from your bank, I have little 
trouble with Japanese forms these years.

A bit more background and a bit of related criticism. [Heaven forbid.] I 
don't particularly like credit cards, though I have used them for many 
years--elsewhere, for security, and in Japan, just for the sake of 
convenience. I actually had credit cards issued in other countries, but for 
whatever mysterious reasons, they just didn't seem to be accepted in Japan, 
so I finally applied for a Japanese credit card. However, this new trend of 
store-specific credit-and-customer-loyalty cards linked to special discounts 
is a really dumb idea. The whole idea of cash is the convenience of using it 
anywhere. Call me a raging capitalist, but I think competition is a good 
thing--but not very feasible if I'm required to carry special plastic money 
for each of the stores that could be competing against each other. Or is 
this really a plot to sell jumbo wallets?

By the way, I do want to thank you for rejecting that first credit card 
application (after a couple of iterations) some years ago. I'm sure you 
saved me a great deal of frustration. Other companies were only too willing 
to give me credit cards. Actually, I'm pretty sure I was first conned into 
applying for a credit card at your bank as part of some kind of promotion. I 
certainly should not have allowed myself to be fooled again into making this 
recent application.

Now let's get back to this new bookstore-related credit card. With the 
assistance of your employee I submitted the application and they accepted 
it. I didn't have my hanko with me, but they assured me that would be taken 
care of later. A few days later, I received a form, and in accord with my 
policy, I went down to your bank and got someone to walk me through filling 
out and stamping of the form. A while later, I received your credit card. I 
should have suspected something was wrong, since it always is with your 
corporation. However, by this time you'd had weeks to check things over, and 
I foolishly decided to trust you. I went to the bookstore and bought a 
couple of books. Two weeks later, I went back to the bookstore and bought 
some more books.

Then I received an envelope with some forms from your company. There was 
apparently something wrong with my paperwork. What a shock. NOT.

Now we've finally reached my most recent visit to your bank. I took my hanko 
and the forms. I was directed to a different floor. I took my number. I was 
called to the desk. I handed over the papers and made it clear that I wanted 
to do whatever you wanted done to fix the problem, whatever the problem was. 
The woman read the papers for a few moments. She examined my gaijin card 
carefully. She then showed me where to write something and where to stamp my 
hanko on the horrendous mistake. It seemed the problem had been rectified. 
Then she looked at it a bit more, and changed her mind. That was apparently 
insufficient, and some new forms needed to be filled out. Apparently she'd 
remembered the rule about corrected forms. Or whatever.

In one sense, I feel I should apologize for my next actions. It was an 
essentially angry decision. However, I think I should really apologize for 
ever having filed the application in the first place. What happened was that 
I reached my limit. I decided to terminate the entire business. I asked her 
for a pair of scissors. I took the credit card out of my wallet, cut it into 
two pieces. I returned the scissors, left the forms and the credit card 
pieces on the desk, took my gaijin card, and left the bank. She was 
apparently upset by this denouement. I do not like upsetting people, and I 
am sorry I upset her, but everyone has limits, and you had reached mine.

Now we're back to the beginning. I owe you some money for the books I've 
received. I look forward to paying you by whatever mutually convenient 
method you specify. If you require I make a trip to your office with the 
cash, it will have to wait at least until the 21st. I also wish I could 
forget that this entire business had ever occurred.

As an encouragement to your prompt handling of this matter, I am now 
informing you that I will probably share this letter in public places such 
as my website. If you provide a persuasive and reasonable explanation of 
your actions and somehow manage to convince me that public censure is 
undeserved, then I will either post your response after my comments, or even 
remove my public comments. I'm even willing to apologize if I've made a 
mistake. However, right now I think my biggest mistake is to continue doing 
business with any organization which is in any way affiliated with you.