cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stupid Bank Shit. Well, that's too bad. I really liked my bank. It was locally owned. We had a nice little relationship. They were always my first stop for a loan and the manager and I saw each other every day so the application or whatever was always just a formality. Likewise, every time I have some large sum of money to park for a while it would go straight to them. Then they got bought by Union Bank. And everything went to shit in the last money. Overdraft protection suddenly entails a $33 fee for every transaction. At my other bank, they only charge interest on the amount overdrawn. Fees everywhere. Constant fuck-ups. Last month I walked in to deposit a check for $5,000 and the idiot transferee from another Union branch refused my deposit because I was asking for $10 cash bank (lunch) and she couldn't see my current balance because of some shit with their new software. Fine. Fuck you. I took my $5,000 down the street to another local bank where I have an account. Then today was the final straw. They are saying that we've been overdrawn by over $1,000 for the last 4 days. WTF? I was just at the ATM yesterday to check my balance and it showed around $700. So I took out $20 and then they hit me with an invisible $33 fee for that. $33 for every trip to the gas station, grocery store or ATM in the last 4 days. Something like $300 in fees. That was it. I'm done. I walked in there, settled up the balance with a cash deposit and informed them that we are closing the account. Now it's just a matter of getting my auto-deposit switched over and then Trish has to change all our electronic bill-paying shit. Stupid fuckers. The lesson I have learned over the years since opening my first bank account at the age of 8 is that you should run like hell from any bank that doesn't charge a basic monthly fee for a checking account. How the fuck are they going to make any money like that? The interest they retain on most people's typical monthly checking balances is not enough to cover servicing costs. And the offer of 'free checking' will tend to attract lower-value customers to whom the $10 a month is a big enough deal to move banks for. The banks that do that generally make their money by having a million other outrageous fees that you don't even see coming. The 'free checking' is just bullshit to get customers in the door. For most people, the account with 'free checking' will end up costing way more over the course of a year than if they'd been with another bank paying a steady $10 a month or whatever. Of course, Union Bank was especially short-sighted in fucking me over with this bullshit because they didn't even consider how much of the iceberg was underwater and out of sight. My company has hundreds of thousands of dollars of our own money that goes into various types of bank accounts. Plus about $5,000,000 of other people's money that we have custody of over the course of a year which we have to keep somewhere. I get to make decisions about where this money goes. Just last week I moved $75k into a different account based on my own judgement. Most of the millions of dollars of other people's money is kept with the other local bank where I'm moving all my personal shit over to. Had Union not pissed me off, they'd have had a shot in getting all of my company's business as well. Oh well. I guess that ripping me off for $33 fees was more important than getting that $5,000,000 from me in deposits. 4:08 p.m. - 2007-09-20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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