Another Bank Lets Me Down Doubly
by Paul McGoldrick
Those readers who have followed the fun I have had in the past with Wells Fargo Bank might be interested to know that my current balance at Wells Fargo is 55 cents. It was 80 cents but I wrote a check for 25 cents some months ago because the bank threatened to mark the account as "inactive" to avoid the cost of mailing statements. Heavens forfend! I certainly want to continue receiving my statement, which I hope is costing them at least $1 a month.
On the home front my spouse and I had a joint account with Bank of America while we were still living in California. We closed it in protest when the bank started hiring most of its staff as part-timers with no benefits. When we moved state some time later the choice of banks was rather fewer and Bank of America appeared to be the only fee-free choice -- or it was until a few months ago.
For absolutely no reason a fee started to appear on statements as a "Check Return Fee" of $1 (copying Wells Fargo again.) Given a choice I wouldn't want the checks returned anyway -- and that's another story -- but I certainly don't appreciate an under-the-table charge. I wrote to the local manager (instead of a banking center in another state) threatening closure of the account if the charges were not reversed. They were not, so I closed the account; only then did the "what can we do?" requests start to come in.
About the same time a high-balance Visa account for an airline affiliate program -- through Bank of America -- started to play silly games with its statements. Each month the statement was mailed closer and closer to the payment due date; each month there were strange interest charges appearing. Every month for a period of about four months I had to call to get these charges reversed but the final straw came when a statement arrived that allowed me 4 days to pay the account. I closed it, of course, and yes you can guess, only then did the "what can we do?" requests started to come.
Companies like Bank of America, which runs its different operations as franchises, are in the business these days of squeezing every available penny out of the consumer instead of offering service; the two cannot co-exist. The local Bank of America branch has an incredible turnover of tellers -- and there are usually only a couple anyway -- presumably because the employees find a better job somewhere else that does offer benefits. Compared to that my local bank (owned by another small bank about 25 miles away) offers full-time jobs with full benefits and there always seem to be at least four on duty at the front windows when you walk in.
Any company needs to pride itself on service above all else -- and that
has to include banks; unless they want to end up with thousands of other
accounts with 55 cents to service.