I just went to a nearby Citibank branch to deposit an expense check. Now, usually this is an uneventful process, but today something odd happened. I filled out what I already feel to be a needlessly complex deposit form, dealt with the teller, and got my receipt slip. When I looked over the receipt, I noticed the check was deposited to my checking, not my savings as I had indicated on the slip.

Now, why does Citi make customers take extra time to fill out these slips, if they are not going to heed the information on them? For one thing, it is annoying to even fill them out in full. But secondly, and the important point, this adds an unnecessary and potentially dangerous paper trail. If tellers do not need these slips (I slide my debit card to prove my identity and provide account data), why are they still in use? People tend not to throw these away very carefully, and nefarious types can grab much more sensitive data than an ATM receipt (since full account info is on deposit slips).

Doesn’t make sense, but sadly a lot of customer-facing processes still don’t. On the plus side, that’s why we’re still in business.