“What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”

That adage sprang into my mind when I read a letter from a major commercial bank today about changes to my business checking account. The letter proudly announced that “we are revamping our overdraft services to make them clearer and simpler.”

Doubtful, and I certainly wasn’t reassured by the 39 different fees which were included on two enclosed pages. It doesn’t seem that they have eliminated many.

Most importantly, what was missing was context. Apparently, the Bank thinks I have memorized their current fee structure and therefore would immediately recognize how these changes differed and would be beneficial.

For example, they said that they will now post items to my account in the order that they hit the account. If I didn’t know this new sequence is instead of their current practice of posting from largest to smallest, I wouldn’t understand why this could produce fewer overdrafts. (If one big check is deducted first, then lots of little checks could go through in overdraft, each incurring a fee instead of only one big check overdrawing the account and incurring one overdraft fee.) However, they didn’t tell me that—I had to delve into my arcane banking trivia trove.

Similarly, the Bank seems to have confused the word “simply” with “only.”

Repeatedly, they say that a fee is “now simply $.50 when you order currency straps” (yes, I think I need those to keep their grubby hands away from my money) or “coin roll fee is now simply $.15 per coin roll.” An amount of money is neither simple nor complex—it is either cheap or expensive. Again, without context, how am I to know how appreciative to be of these new fees?

Banks have become so used to hiding behind gobbledygook that even if they have good news they manage to bury it.

Irene Etzkorn is the executive director, simplification for the Siegel+Gale New York office.