Frost Gets Bent Over By His Bank

Financial troubles are usually the result of poor consumer behaviors. But in an age where the banks themselves are financially shaky, they just make ends meet by turning on their customers. Just today, CNN reported that banks are expected to rake in a record $38,500,000,000.00 BILLION in overdraft fees this year. But if you are fiscally responsible like yours truly, you should be safe, right? Guess again.

Yesterday I got a letter in the mail from my bank. It stated that I was nearing the maximum limit of telephone transfers in my billing period. That's odd. I've never made a phone transfer.

I also noticed that I've been charged $5.95 every month for a "Bill Pay Access Fee". This also confuses me, because I've never used my bank's "Bill Pay" service... not even once.

Today I logged on to my bank's online account system and discovered that my savings account has been closed. WTF? I stormed into the bank and asked to talk to a banker. The banker looked at my records and said, "Ahh... Yeah, you're going to have to call our 1-800 number. There's nothing I can do." Really? Because I'm RIGHT HERE, at the damn bank right now... Why would I call your Customer Service line in India?

I call. I ask about the Bill Pay Access Fee. I'm told that I'll have to talk to a Customer Service representative about that. *blink* I thought I WAS talking to a Customer Service Representative. Who the hell is this clown?

I ask about my closed account. Phone monkey tells me it was closed because I made too many phone transfers. I adamantly stated that I've never made ANY phone transfers. He says that any transfers via online banking count as phone transfers. I'm only allowed 6 transfers per month. The funds that were in the account were captured by the bank as a "closing fee", leaving me with a $0.00 balance. This is preposterous!

I ask the phone monkey about this situation: I can walk into a branch office, speak with a teller, withdraw funds from one account, then immediately deposit them into the other account, and I can do this all day long, as many times as I want, for free. This wastes my time, costs me fuel, and costs the bank money in teller labor, and receipt paper. Yet doing the EXACT SAME THING ONLINE, an automated electronic process, which in reality costs nothing to the bank or the consumer, is limited by an imaginary regulation which results in a closed account if exceeded. Phone monkey tells me this is correct. He couldn't really give me a clear explanation, but babbled on about FDIC regulations, and if I make withdrawals then it depletes the bank's reserves which are federally insured in the first place. He says that a TRANSFER is considered a chargeable service, and a withdrawal is considered a sale, or rather a TRANSFER of goods between two parties. He realizes this is circular logic, and tries to clear things up by simply doing another lap.

I explain to the phone monkey that I manage my money by having all of my income enter one account wherein it's automatically dispersed to several sub-accounts. Considering today's travesty, I deduced that this style of money management would be better handled in cash via envelopes at home, rather than being subjected to ludicrous bank policies. Phone monkey strongly discouraged this, and suggested that I open more new accounts.

Finally I asked the phone monkey if he could give me one good reason why I shouldn't just keep my hard-earned cash under my mattress. He went back into the FDIC thing, and tried to convince me that they provided better services and security than my mattress. After the poor answers he gave me today, I asked if he truly believed that. After all, I get a wealth of entertainment out of my mattress, and to date, no transaction I've ever had on my mattress has ever cost me a dime.

I live below my means, I manage my income well, I put an awful lot into savings and investments... and I'm rewarded with shady banking practices which penalize me. Just my luck.