Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Bodhi on May 29, 2003, 07:11:48 AM
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Sent to:
Kenneth Lewis
Chairman and CEO, Bank of America
Bank of AMerica Corporate Center
100 North Tryon Street
Charlotte, NC 28255
Dear Mr. Lewis
I was livid when my employees informed me that as of today, they were being charged $5.00 by your (and my) bank to cash their weekly paychecks if they did not have an account with your (no longer my) bank. I called the branch where I have had a business account for over 12 years and that was confirmed as the new corporate policy. I also called two other national banks and that is not their policy - they honor checks written on their banks without penalizing the person attempting to cash them.
I realise I am a peanut and you are one of the elephants in the grand scheme of our world. However, I will not be party to feeding the elephants. In that regard, I will be opening a business account with one of your compeititors on Monday, will be a past customer within 30 days.
Sincerely,
Name witheld for privacy
Bank of America's Reply
Dear Mr. Name witheld for privacy
Thank you for thaking the time to write and for allowing me the oppurtunity to research and respond to your letter to Mr. Kenneth D. Lewis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bank of America. Mr. Lewis has asked the Executive Relations Office to research and respond to you regarding your employees being charged a five dollar service fee for cashing their payroll checks.
Our customers have told us they don't like to wait in long lines in our banking centers. Non-customer check cashing contributes to significant traffic volume in our banking centers. We believe the $5.00 convienience fee may help reduce lobby traffic thereby giving our tellers more time to better serve our account holders.
Bank of America has a contract with its business account holders to provide certain products and services. THis contract is not extended to the employess of the account holder. There is no fee to deposit a check drawn on Bank of America into your present checking account. Anyone interested in opening up an account with us will be surprised to learn that we offer a wide variety of accounts to meet the needs of all customers.
Thank you for the oppurtunity to share our position regarding this issue. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact me at ###-###-####.
Sincerely,
Name withheld for privacy (Not the CEO)
Executive Relations
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What's interesting here? The policy seems okay to me...:confused:
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Hate to say it, but in this case the bank is right in charging its "non-account holding" cheque cashers a fee.
They are wrong in stating that the excuse is to shorten lines for their customers though.
Fact is it costs the bank time and money to cash cheques drawn on another bank.
Banking is a business, like any other. People seem to think that banking is some sort of right.
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Personally the policy does not affect me, my checks are deposited into my account, and if they are drawn through another bank, they go through it. WHat is interesting is that BoA is charging the customers customers for cashing his checks. Thats the sad thing of it. They may be a business, but they have no customer service. As for the excuse of having to cover costs to cash their checks... I say BS, that is a poor excuse, their customer wrote the funds out of their bank, and they should have the decncy to honor them in person, without an added fee. They are already making money hand over fist, no need to gouge people's eyes out.
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Think you misread it Curval, the checks are drawn from them, not another bank.
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Original letter:
"they were being charged $5.00 by your (and my) bank to cash their weekly paychecks if they did not have an account with your (no longer my) bank."
Reply:
"THis contract is not extended to the employess of the account holder"
The cheques are drawn on Bank of America...but you need to have an account there to be able to cash cheques without a $5 fee.
I did misread....
This is silly. The bank can check if there are availiable funds very quickly so there is no issue with "clearing" the cheques.
Cash grab on behalf of the bank.
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I guess it is a bit much... How many employees are we talking about anyway?
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Whats the problem?!
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Bank of America is the biggest POS bank ive ever had the misfortune to experience.
They never sent my statements in time, when they sent them at all in the first place (I have 6 months total of missing statements, they were never mailed to me, see below).
I began by going to the bank's local branch to check if they had my address right or if there was any problem mailing my statements... they said it was fine that it must be the mail that was having problems (uh-huh). And this went on throught the 2 years i was with that bank.
Then with my checking and savings account they would "lose" my money for a WEEK at a time when i x-fered from checking to savings. Again, talking with the branch manager they said they had no clue what was going on, but that they would be more than willing to "backtrack" the issue and find a resolution... for a $40 fee. I was like WTF????????????
Credit cards... 1 month before I cancelled my account completely I began cancelling my credit cards with them (had 2). They were all paid off in full (had been paid off for 2 months already)... first CC I went to cancel turns out they could NOT cancel it because there was some kind of fee still unpaid. WTF? I showed them their own statement (which I had them print a copy of in their office, 'cause I sure as heck was not receving the statements anymore) and it clearly showed ZERO balance and no fees. Stil they said there was a $10 fee for CANCELLING the card. WTF???? I looked over my C.C. legalese 2-page folder of terms and conditions and never found any mention of it.. and they did not care to point out where it was.
Having enough, I found a local credit union, set up my account with them and went to BOA and cancelled the whole account, got all my money in a cashier's check, took 2 photocopies of it and of the bank statement before I took the money out.
3 months later I received a statement from BOA saying I was owing them like 2 dollars for account maintainance. I took my paperwork to the local branch, and asked to speak directly with the head honcho. Took me 2 hours with the moron in charge, who kept saying there would be a fee for getting it all resolved, that he was sorry (*groan*) but that they still needed to squeeze my pockets to fix their fuggin mistakes.
Left, went to credit union, asked the local manager there what her thoughts were on this mess, showed her the paperwork I had. She made a couple of calls and got it straightened out.
"We get this all the time from B.O.A." was all she said.
The C.U. has been just awesome since then. I took one of their C.C's, been using it for a year now, its got the same 14% apr of my deceased BOA CC's.. and last week I got a call from the lady in the loan dept of my local branch (which i worked with to refinance my car and open my C.C. with the C.U.), she told me that I could now change my CC from the 14% to a 10.45% apr card.
You cant beat service like that!
BOA can put my dirty shirts in a pot of water, boil them and sip the broth. :D :D
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When I was a kid my mom tried to teach me all about saving my weekly allowance and using a bank. So we opened up an account at a local bank. My hard-earned allowances savings went to a zero balance in the bank's monthly fees within 2 months. Yeah, I learned a lot about banking.
When I became an adult and started on my career path, I joined a credit union.
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Bank Of America has been great to me, better than any others. If your company doesn't have Direct Deposit in this day and age you're working for turds. My CC, Mortgage, Checking, Savings are all with them and I can transfer at any time to anyone of them. Besides the fact this issue is well over a year old. And if you go here Linkage (http://www.consumersunion.org/finance/noncustprsw1001.htm) you'll see they aren't the only one.
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several years ago we had a similar problem (I think it was a wells Fargo bank but I'm not 100% sure) nobody at the bank or the company I was working for seemed to interested in fixing the problem.
I simply brought my union steward with me to talk to the paymaster and explained that the bank he was using was charging us $6 per check to cash them. do to this fee my checks where in fact $6 light (as they where only being honored for $6 less than face value) and that I expected to be reimbursed for the 4 checks I already cashed and that in the future he could make the checks out for an additional $6 each or pay me in cash in the future (and would file a complaint through the union that I would easily win if he didn't comply). I also told him I would be letting everybody else know what I was doing and would suggest that they do the same.
with the several hundred guys on our project alone, and many more projects across the world this added up to quite an expense to the company. and with the amount of money they had in their accounts they had no problem straightening out the bank.
of course they just made an exception for our company (show your id badge) they still kept screwing over everyone else.
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Originally posted by gofaster
When I was a kid my mom tried to teach me all about saving my weekly allowance and using a bank. So we opened up an account at a local bank. My hard-earned allowances savings went to a zero balance in the bank's monthly fees within 2 months. Yeah, I learned a lot about banking.
LOL...so so true.
I had a similar situation whereby I had been given a small block of BANK shares as a present by some relative for my birthday. The dividends went into an account that I set up just to receive them.
Every month statements would show up and I never looked at them. It wasn't until the bank called and were demanding that I cover an overdraft in that account due to the bank charges that had caused it to be overdrawn that I realised how I had been "had".
I then changed my dividends so that they would simply be automatically re-invested in shares.
It was a good lesson, fortunately learned early in life.
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So they charge $5 to clear the lobby.....and have less business?
Wow. Sounds like a new Category for Darwin to expand to.
Only bad bank I've encountered is Key Bank. Eh gad, numb!
Credit Union ever since!
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interesting, so people still "cash" checks and carry around paper money?
i use direct deposit and buy with a debit card, i carry very little "cash".
i also pay bills like elect, phone,etc over the internet and have 24/7 access to my bank account on the net.
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Originally posted by LePaul
Only bad bank I've encountered is Key Bank. Eh gad, numb!
Key Bank....I refinanced about five years ago,and after the first two months,my home equity line was sold to them.They immediately started sending me delinquent account notices and threatened to send it to a collection agency.
I explained that I had sent the checks in for the first two months,but the other company had not forwarded them to Keybank(despite dumping the entire loan amount on them).Even after I sent them a fax with photocopies of the checks,their attitude was,"we don't care,you pay up and try to get the money that wasn't forwarded to us back for yourself".
I told them on the phone FU.Sicked the Attorney General on them and everything was miraculously fixed almost immediately.I guess even just an intervening letter can get their attention.
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Well,
I dumped Bank of America a while back when the wanted to charge me for accessing my acct online. I was told it would be a 40$ charge to set it up.
I was a customer for 10 years.
I asked to speak with a supervisor and they said "corporate policy"....just like mentioned in an earlier post.
Well then..... I took my Direct Deposit USAF pay and sent it to USAA banking. They lost me as a customer for LIFE.
All that over a silly computer transaction.....oh well...they will NEVER see my business.
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Rofl I haven't heard anyone using cheques for the past 20 years.
I haven't carried cash money for about 12 years. Usually I keep a couple coins for parking meters though.
Every single local shop accepts cash/credit card payments which are electronically verified online in realtime.. The only time I've had to use cash is on the holiday trips to the mediterranean.
Heck even parking fees can be paid through cellular phones on many places now.
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Agreed...I haven't Carried a Check, seen a payroll check, or carried cash in over 10 years, let alone had to enter the bank for anything other than a change to interest account's or administration reasons... We are not that advanced here in Florida so I would assume the rest of the country has similiar options...
But if one doesn't have a bank account then I could see some issues...
0J0T
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Direct Deposit here too.
Tho with my clients, there have been a few I'm wary of and cash their checks rather than wonder if it will bounce.
KeyBank: For my small biz, I simply deposit checks as they arrive, and at the end of the month, write the check to the ISP for the digital line to my servers. Period. Somehow, Key would "re arrange" the dates to my deposits so that this check would bounce and incur an overdraft. Two other customers mentioned that they too were getting nailed for overdrafts despite being days behind deposits.
Went to their office to talk about this, just got snotty attitudes since I'm just a little guy. So I quietly removed everything I had and brought it to a cheerful Credit Union that offers all the same services for free.
Me and cash are bad. I alot myself a few bucks for coffee and such...and use card/debit for any/all purchases. Requires more effort to spend that way :)
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how do you buy tasty McDonalds quarterpounders with cheese without cash? :D
i know alot of smaller companies like landscape companies and such that still write out checks. in fact my last employer 5 years ago handed out checks... no deposit available and they had like 200 employees. it was a independant photo lab in a suburb of Milwaukee. most of the employees were HS drop-outs or kids with work permits (except us in mgnt. or quality control which i was in charge of :D )
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Originally posted by JB73
it was a independant photo lab in a suburb of Milwaukee. most of the employees were HS drop-outs or kids with work permits (except us in mgnt. or quality control which i was in charge of :D )
LMAO...well we know where you get your porn now :p
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Not carrying Cash has advantages like having to pass Mcdonalds cause they dont accept CC's or dbtcards... That is a perk!!
Cause we all know that Mickey D's will kill you.... Look what happened to Dave Thomas...
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Uh? I've never paid with cash when I've visited McDonalds..
They accept cash cards, e-cash, Visa, Mastercard and Diners to mention a few. At least up here they do.
If I find a shop that doesn't accept c/c the shop won't be worth shopping in. Period.
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OK smart guys, when you stuff a debit card in a stripper's g-string, does she give it back?
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I think you just 'swipe it through the slot'
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Originally posted by myelo
OK smart guys, when you stuff a debit card in a stripper's g-string, does she give it back?
Well... Rumor is they have been known to Order room service a few times in the past... :)
But.. every knows you take out cash before going on a Strip joint binge!! Or else you have to intercept the mail before the wife gets the cc bill in the mail...
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LePaul: So they charge $5 to clear the lobby.....and have less business?
Wow. Sounds like a new Category for Darwin to expand to.
You are making a completely groundless presumption that they will lose more business than they gain because of their policy.
As a customer of a bank, I could withdraw money from the bank's ATM without taking teller's time. The employees in question can do the same thing at their bank.
The only time I see a teller is when I have some serious issue. I do not want to wait in line because a bunch non-customers are cashing their checks.
Neither would I want to pay for more tellers with my banking fees so they can provide services to outsiders who do not pay a cent.
People who have other preferences than no-wait service and low fees can always switch to the competotor like mr. Name witheld for privacy did - that is the beauty of the Free-market competition. Of course he could have just increased his employee's pay by $5 to compensate them for the policy of the bank he chose to hold an account in.
I do not see anything wrong with either the bank policy or mr. Name witheld's choice to switch.
miko
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the policy is fine as long as the guy writing the check includes enough extra to cover it. otherwise a $200 check is really only worth $195 face value, so if the bank his checks are drawn on are only honoring the checks for $5 less than face value he'd have to write each for $5 more than he owes. at an extra $5 per check I'd find another bank.
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That's only if they go to that bank to cash the check. If they went to their bank, there would be no fees. What that bank is doing is charging non-customers to cash checks. What's so evil about that?
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Originally posted by JB73
i know alot of smaller companies like landscape companies and such that still write out checks. in fact my last employer 5 years ago handed out checks... no deposit available and they had like 200 employees. it was a independant photo lab in a suburb of Milwaukee. most of the employees were HS drop-outs or kids with work permits (except us in mgnt. or quality control which i was in charge of :D )
My employer still sends us hand written checks once a month. Guess he must be a high school drop out too... funny thing is, this dinosaur as some of you refer to his kind as, took in over 10 figures last fiscal year. yeah, I will gladly keep accepting my hand written check and deposit it in the ATM like i do every month. I carry little cash, but unfortunately it is still needed espcially in rural NC.
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charging non-customers to cash checks. What's so evil about that?
because it's not just charging non-customers to do them a service. it's charging extra for something they are already obligated to do.
when you set up a checking acount the bank agrees to honor your checks when presented for payment (as long as they are genine, there is suficient funds, signitures match, proper id, etc).
the account holder has an agreement with the bank, he is their customer. when I go to a bank and cash a check that is drawn on that bank, they aren't providing a service for me, they are providing a service for their customer- the man who wrote the check- who has already payed for this service through the service fee's he pays on his account.
even though I generally just deposit my checks. sometimes I am out of town and need to turn them into cash imediately to cover expenses. and it's a rip off for them to charge me a fee when their customer already pays them to handle his account.
on general principal I won't knowingly acsept checks if they are drawn on a bank that charges an extra fee to cash these checks, unless the person writing them includes enough extra to cover the charge. I figure that this will make it more expensive for people to do bussiness with these banks (if it cost me an extra $5 every time I wrote a check I'd look for a new bank).
I encorage everyone who agrees that this practice is wrong to do the same thing. if enough people insist then these banks will have to change to stay in business. one person can't make much of a difference but if enough people refuse to put up with this then they have to change.
btw- the banks don't charge each other for payment of each check. why should we have to pay?
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Nothing wrong with that. German banks are cool. On the other hand I know why my old bank used a stagecoach as its mascot,cause they wanted to be staagecoach robbers.
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Originally posted by myelo
OK smart guys, when you stuff a debit card in a stripper's g-string, does she give it back?
Excellent point!!!
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Originally posted by capt. apathy
because it's not just charging non-customers to do them a service. it's charging extra for something they are already obligated to do.
I'm sorrry, I disagree. I think you are reading to much into the services a bank should provide
when you set up a checking acount the bank agrees to honor your checks when presented for payment (as long as they are genine, there is suficient funds, signitures match, proper id, etc).
They agree to pay the check, yes sir. The proper way to present a check is to go to your bank and deposit it.
the account holder has an agreement with the bank, he is their customer. when I go to a bank and cash a check that is drawn on that bank, they aren't providing a service for me, they are providing a service for their customer- the man who wrote the check- who has already payed for this service through the service fee's he pays on his account.
even though I generally just deposit my checks. sometimes I am out of town and need to turn them into cash imediately to cover expenses. and it's a rip off for them to charge me a fee when their customer already pays them to handle his account.
You feel that the bank here is providing you no service? Again, I disagree.
on general principal I won't knowingly acsept checks if they are drawn on a bank that charges an extra fee to cash these checks, unless the person writing them includes enough extra to cover the charge. I figure that this will make it more expensive for people to do bussiness with these banks (if it cost me an extra $5 every time I wrote a check I'd look for a new bank).
I encorage everyone who agrees that this practice is wrong to do the same thing. if enough people insist then these banks will have to change to stay in business. one person can't make much of a difference but if enough people refuse to put up with this then they have to change.
btw- the banks don't charge each other for payment of each check. why should we have to pay?
To answer your last question, while they might not charge each other, (where would that get them anyway?) it still costs money to process these transfers and to pay the tellers, and to transport the cash, etc... (you know, overhead) It's cool that some banks will just go ahead and cash them, and yeah, it is better service that may lead to more customers for a bank that does, but it is not mandated service.
However, I am guessing we will just have to agree to disagree on this one...
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but it is not mandated service.
I see that it is. what good would a checking acount be if they didn't cash the checks? having the bank hold the money for you and then give it to people (or banks) who present the check as proof of their entitlement to the payment, is the whole point of a checking acount. without that paying out part of the arangement it's a savings account.
while your account would be much bigger if they refused to pay out on your checks not many people would be accepting checks from you.
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If you have a checking account at a bank, theyu should not be able to make $5 everytime you do business with someone that isn't a customer of there's.
The bank knows that if someone was able to deposit there check into their own account somewhere else, they would. All the bank is doing is making $ off someone in a bad spot that doesn't have a bank account and has no other choice.
mho
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Two bank accounts here. One (Amsouth) that gets a direct deposit and the other (local CU) that gets the remainder after I get whats left over from my direct deposit. I still get a check every two weeks. In fact the money I keep out every pay period goes to the computer upgrade fund and has been that way for the last three years. My wife knows she just doesn't know how much she doesn't get to spend. :D
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I think the point here is the bank is charging 5 bucks to honor it's own check, no?
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There´s no bussines like bank bussines.;)
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However, you can all see how distasteful it is to give someone, especially a client of yours or someone that works FOR you, a check and then have them be charged $5 to cash it in the same bank that issued the check.