A week later, I phoned up the bank asking why everything was progressing so slowly and they said I'd failed the security check, so the process had been paused. I explained what had happened, and how it was ridiculous that they expected personal details without even saying they were from the bank, which they seemed to agree with, but said that was their procedure so it was my fault for not complying.
This is the most fascinating (infascinating? like, infamous/famous distinction? whatever) things about bureaucracies, to me: they sincerely expect everyone to follow their internal rules and procedures, even the people who are completely outside their jurisdiction by any stretch of imagination.
Like, "we require the application of your personal seal to the papers" — "Personal seal?.. we use signatures in this part of the world, you know" — "No, we don't accept signatures, it has to be a seal imprint" so then you just stamp some absolutely random rubber stamp and they accept it because even if they can't actually read Cyrillic, it's a stamp and that's all that matters.
I taught at a German university for a few years. And they way grades were handled was, you had to print a standardized piece of paper for every student with their name, date of examination, and grade, and drop them off at the secretary's office.
The secretary would stamp every such Schein with a rubber stamp. Then the students would pick up their Scheine at the secretary's office and bring it to the examination department themselves (!) to get the grade registered. Only at the very of my time there, they changed the system and I could hand in the grades directly to the examination department.
At any rate, the system was so stupid. It was trivial for students to print a new Schein with a better grade and register that (there must have been a lot of fraud). But the counter argument was 'no, it's very safe because the students do not have a rubber stamp'. Of course, the rubber stamp was just the university logo with something like the faculty name next to it. Trivial to copy (or make a rubber stamp for more enterprising students).
Probably the procedure had been followed since 1573, well before home printers, scanners, phone cameras, or get-your-own-rubber-stamp-for-a-few-bucks internet shops.
This is almost always how these seemingly silly bureaucracy hoops become established. They were created in a prior time where a third party obtaining "magic item Y" with which to authenticate was significantly difficult to near impossible. Then, over time, the world, and technology improve, to the point where anyone, willing to spend $9.99, can have an exact duplicate of "magic authentication item Y" manufactured via any one of 78 different makers. But the bureaucracy continues using the now outdated process because "this is the way it has always been done".
It is largely a real world example of "The Monkeys, Bananas and Ladder Experiment": https://psychologyfor.com/the-monkeys-bananas-and-ladder-exp...
Sometimes it becomes truly ridiculous: I once had to apply for some thing, and was told I need to grab and provide them some certificate from a different government service to prove that I'm actually eligible. Okay, I do that, and then they spend two weeks verifying the certificate by physically mailing and inquiring info about me from that other service and waiting for them to respond (also by physical mail).
My entire career is predicted on the things I did with a stack of university letterhead 40 years ago.
They wanted a government issued identification document with both photograph of the individual as well as their physical address on it.
No such document exists for South Africans, I offered to get attestations from lawyers, police, but nothing was good enough.
Then I had to threaten charging back the credit card to get a refund (as opposed to credit) on the not-insubstantial fee for a service that their verification policies made impossible to be fulfilled by South African entities.
We succeeded with DigiCert, was a bit involved including getting sign off by a certified security consultant that we had appropriate procedures in place to protect the private key, but eventually got through the process.
They were a _little_ more cooperative about it though.
"Hi this is <Person> from <ABC Inc.>. Can I start by confirming your name and date of birth?"
"Who is this?"
"<Person> from <ABC Inc.>. Can I start by confirming your name and date of birth?"
"No, you may not. What's this regarding?"
"I can't discuss that with you until you verify your identity."
"Okay, well I have no idea who you are so I'm not about to do that."
"Well, I can't tell you anything else until you confirm your identity for me."
"Okay."
"So can I get your name and date of birth please?"
"No."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"Can you tell me what _day_ in January of 1970 were you born?"
(Turns out the ISP did their usual ISP thing and failed to mark that I'd returned my modem when cancelling service a few months prior then told no one and sent it to collections. The debt collector was very adamant that I needed to set up a payment because this wasn't going away. I walked into one of the ISP's retail outlets, told them what happened, they sighed heavily because this comes up _constantly_ and called in to have it marked returned and I never heard from anyone ever again. The end.)
Spectrum did this to me. They sent a single "hey, you owe us for this thing" email before sending it to collections.
The best was that certain sections were circular, so it would start to ask the same questions again but displaying answers prefilled in - yet it would arbitrarily forget particular (different) details on each loop, defaulting to values other than what you'd entered before, so there were only certain points you should exit the loop at, to be sure it would submit the right information!
On the plus side, despite their system woes, they had very competitive rates, so it was definitely financially worth spending another 20 minutes and accepting their idiocy!
Also, now I remember that I also had to jump through some deceptive hoops. The deal was technically only available on the graduate account, which my account had stopped being earlier in the year because it changed to a regular account after 10 years from opening. The bank manager said she'd bend the rules and let me have the deal as an exception, but then presented me with a load of life insurance policies to sign (which of course I didn't want or need) and it was strongly intimated that if I didn't sign them, she'd no longer bother bending the rules to get me the mortgage deal. So, I signed them, and as soon as I had the mortgage confirmation letter through the post I phoned up to cancel before the end of the 14 day cooling off period. I dread to think how much commission she'd have made from me if I didn't cancel.