The Banker Behind the Curtain

An unintended casualty of a failed bank, I opened an envelope from the national bank that had usurped the assets of the local financial institution where I opened a checking account upon moving to Chicago nearly seven years before. I had to read the letter within twice, because I simply couldn't believe what I was reading. It claimed that the deposit of cash and local checks I made on a Thursday still wasn't available for withdrawal the following Wednesday, which is when I had scheduled a number of payments to be made. And unlike my old bank, which never charged for withdrawals made from an account which had sufficient (but not yet available) funds, my new bank socked me with $35 per transaction, and charged interest for every day I didn't rectify the problem. They started charging interest on Thursday, the letter came Saturday afternoon. By the time I got to the bank Monday morning, I was on my fifth day of interest and fuming.

Deciding to give my new bank the benefit of the doubt, I sat down to speak with a banker, prepared to chalk the entire incident up to one big misunderstanding. I asked why my money wouldn't have been available an entire week after I made the deposit, explained that I would have taken care of the misunderstanding sooner had I known, and asked if there was anything that they could do. She tried to tell me it took local checks 2-3 days to clear, when the sign on her desk clearly read 1-2 business days. Then she told me she didn't know, then she told me that I had overdrawn my account. None of these things were true.

I argued that, if Takeover Bank was going to handle fees differently than Failed Bank, account holders should have been notified of these changes. Furthermore, if Takeover Bank was going to charge interest on overdrawn accounts, they should notify customers instantaneously by phone or email. Even the teller who made my deposit the day before I received the overdraft letter could have mentioned that my deposit was not enough to cover all the money that the bank had pulled out of my account.

The Deceptive Banker said she would talk to her boss for me. She disappeared, then came back a few minutes later, saying that they would reverse the charges for all but one NSF fee and one day of interest. I updated my check register, but still wasn't getting the same total that she was. I asked two or three times if I had forgotten to record a withdrawal or if there were other charges on my account that I didn't know about. She assured me there was nothing missing from my records and convinced me that I just needed a calculator. I would have preferred them to have reversed all the charges, but decided that was fair, thanked Deceptive Banker for her time, and left.

The next day, another envelope from Takeover Bank appeared in my mailbox. With a combined sense of foreboding and deja vu, I open the letter to discover that I had in fact been socked with twice as many fees as Deceptive Banker had claimed, fees which had been posted to my account days before my meeting with her. She was aware of the charges, even though I was not, and failed to disclose these charges to me even when I asked her directly.

I spent the next couple of weeks calling the bank, trying to speak with the branch manager, but to no avail. I kept getting transferred back to Deceptive Banker, who told me that she'd tell her boss that I "didn't understand" what she had told me, and if he "felt like" reversing more fees, he would. And if he didn't "feel like it", then I was out of luck.

After another week of calling and getting the run around from the branch manager-- the Banker Behind the Curtain-- who flat out refused to speak with me, an exasperated receptionist finally patched me through to the teller manager. She was very kind and took the time to look up my deposit and answer my questions, but when I asked her to honor the amount that Deceptive Banker told me I had been charged, she went right back to the root of my problems.

Not surprisingly, Deceptive Banker changed her story, and the kind teller manager relayed the Banker Behind the Curtain's decision to refund one more day of interest to placate me. I was not placated, and asked once more to speak to the Great Oz directly, because what they were doing was dishonest. She told me (albeit apologetically) that the Wizard's decision was final, and there was nothing more she could do.

At this point, I'm far more steamed about the way Takeover Bank has handled this entire debacle than I am about the charges themselves. And as for the Banker Behind the Curtain-- if he can't make the time to talk to little old me, maybe he'll be able to clear some time in his busy day of cheating, then hiding from, customers to talk to a representative from the OCC, which received my formal complaint against Takeover Bank this morning.