Au secours?
I seem to be having communication problems with my French bank.
I want to close all my accounts with them, settle any outstanding account charges, and transfer the remaining balance (which is a significant sum, several months' living expenses) to my German bank. It's not a complicated request, and a month ago I sent them a letter which, I thought, made these points reasonably clear. After some to-ing and fro-ing on the phone, their response was to close an old housing plan I had (which I'd left because it gave reasonable interest) and a defunct Swiss-franc exchange account, while leaving my main account in situ.
While I can still write a vaguely coherent sentence, my French is abominably rusty (and oddly German-flavoured), and I'm no longer confident that I can correctly navigate all the idioms and technical terms. For instance, 'to close' usually translates as 'fermer,' but I'm not sure that's the right word to apply to a bank account. So, I request the help of some reasonably fluent and idiomatic French speaker among my Friends: please would you correct the following letter so that it says, with all the right banking terms and idioms and conventions and flourishes and salutations,
CLOSE ALL MY ACCOUNTS
(and now, please)
TAKE YOUR POUND OF FLESH FROM THE PROCEEDS
AND SEND THE REST TO GERMANY.
THANK YOU.
GOODBYE FOREVER.
Monsieur le Directeur
(rest of address)
Wölfehöhlen,
le 6 Novembre 2007
Monsieur le Directeur,
Je vous saurais gré de bien vouloir procéder à la clôture de mon compte cheque en euro, no 1234567890. Ayant débité tous cotisations de service et de carte bancaire, bien vouloir verser le solde créditeur sur le compte suivant en étranger: Récipient: (wolf's name),
Adresse: (wolf's lair)
Banque: (bank's name, bank's address)
(etcetera, with BIC and IBAN and so on)
Je vous prie, Monsieur, d'agréer à l'éxpression de mes sentiments distinguées.
Fait à Wölfehöhlen, le 6 Novembre 2007
*pawprint*
Wolf.