I am a priority customer

 Priority Banking: A Short Story

“Thank you for your patience. As our priority customer, we are happy to serve you.”

Haven’t we all heard this before—and for a second felt a little elated? Especially the first time we were told we’d been promoted.

I’ve been trying to fix a simple issue with my bank in India for about a month now.

I thought it would be simple. How wrong I was.

It’s a straightforward problem. Nothing complex. The kind of thing you assume gets sorted in a few minutes if someone just looks at it properly.

I’ve mailed. I’ve called. I’ve followed up—again and again.

Every call starts the same way.

First five minutes: card number, account number, date of birth, address, OTP… my entire life story, lightly interrogated and cross-checked. Somewhere in between, they start using my first name too—like we’re old friends catching up instead of going through security clearance.

And while I’m typing all this in, the automated voice just keeps going—calm, robotic, almost indifferent—slowly frying my brain in the background.

I’m going cross-eyed trying to enter everything before the system times out.

I’ve spoken to so many call centre agents across India now that I genuinely worry one day someone will recognise me—by name, account number, or just the sheer frequency of my suffering.

A close friend even tried to help.

He got nowhere.

Quietly. Politely. Efficiently. He did everything right—but it just came back to me and the whole thing started looping again.

And now I’m locked out of my own account, which is where all of this started. I’ve spent hours—days—fretting, fuming, pacing around like I’m negotiating a hostage situation, breathing like that’s somehow going to fix the system.

Then comes the familiar line:

“Thank you for your patience. As our priority customer, we are happy to serve you.”

To be fair, the call centre people are polite. Almost too polite. Always calm, always composed.

They’re somewhere in an office I can’t even place on a map, doing their best inside a system that doesn’t seem very clear even to them.

And that’s the strange part—everything is polite, everything is patient… and nothing really moves.

It’s like watching a very well-dressed orchestra in slow motion, where everyone is smiling and nodding, but somehow playing completely different songs.

And still, they say it again:

“You are a Priority Customer.”

Priority? Seriously ? 

And you just pause at that word.

Because you can’t help wondering—what does non-priority look like?

If this is priority, what on earth is normal service? Smoke signals? Carrier pigeons? A letter that arrives next financial year?

Or maybe the real question is simpler: shouldn’t everyone already be priority if they’re a customer?

Because right now, “priority” doesn’t feel faster. It just feels… nicer words around the same waiting.

Same delays. Same escalations. Same loop. Just better manners.

The issue is still not solved. I’ve been fully verified, repeatedly thanked, reassured, and officially prioritized. And yet, as I finish writing this, I’m told it’s resolved—again as a priority customer.

It hasn’t.

Somewhere in the background, it feels like a bugle is being played off-key—confidently, loud, and completely out of sync with reality.

If everything is a priority, what does priority even mean?