YOU CAN TAKE THIS TO THE BANK
August 16, 2012 § 6 Comments
Many more years ago than I care to think about, when I could not have been more than ten years old, my sainted grandfather (paw-paw Walter, we called him) took me in tow and we walked hand in hand out of his appliance store, across South State Street in my little home town of Abbeville, LA, into First National Bank.
First National Bank of Abbeville was a serious place where adults went to perform esoteric rites beyond the ken of youngsters. It was a place of “business” where no childish frivolity was allowed. We entered together. There were the tellers in their crisp, short-sleeved white shirts and clip-on ties (all men), their pomaded hair and balding pates glistening in the fluorescent light. There were the marble-topped tables with brass fixtures and chained pens that patrons used to inscribe bank forms with the runes of commerce. There was an air of solemnity in the little walnut-panelled bank. People conducted their business in a sort of sacramental hush, as if the money and paper passed between them was a kind of commercial communion.
We went into a bank officer’s splendid office and sat in the leather-upholstered chairs facing him across his uncluttered, massive desk. A muted clock tocked out of view. Tasseled drapes hung across the window, obscuring the view of the whitewashed courthouse across the street, but allowing an afternoon splash of light. Some words were exchanged between the adults that I did not understand, but the officer smiled, reached into a drawer and pulled out a page of paper that my grandfather signed. My grandfather handed the man a couple of bills, whereupon the bank officer wrote something on an impossibly tiny book and handed it to me. From what little I understood of cursive writing at the time, I could make out my name on the cover of the book.
Back across the street in his store, my grandfather explained that I now had a savings account with a few dollars in it. The transaction had taken only a few minutes, but it made me feel like I had entered, or at least gotten a glimpse into, the mysterious realm of adulthood. I proudly took my passbook home and put it in as safe a private place as I could, considering the tribe of siblings I grew up with.
Fast forward more than fifty years.
I have had a miniscule savings account at a local bank for several years. The bank required me to open it with only $300 when I opened a home improvement line of credit, now paid off. Why this was required, I don’t know. But the money has languished there, earning pennies every quarter.
Or so I thought. I discovered that the bank has been charging my savings account an “account maintenance fee.” Now, I don’t know about you, but I had thought the deal was that, in return for the safekeeping of my money as long as I left it there, the bank would pay me an almost vaporous amount of interest and have nearly free use of it to earn money for itself.
Nope. They have been charging me a fee to “maintain” something that requires no maintenance as far as I can discern. They also unauthorizedly paid my safe deposit box rent out of the account, depriving me of the documentation I need to include that on my 1040. Then I discovered that they had even charged my account for a payment against the line of credit, which caused the little account to dip below some line of tolerance, costing me a few more farthings. By the way, I was dinged for the extra charge despite the fact that the loan was paid off in full that month and the bank even had to send me an overpayment refund of several hundred dollars. My miserable little account was being nibbled to nothing by the ducks of banking.
I went to the bank and sat down with an 11-year-old “vice president” (okay, I concede he probably was older, but danged near everybody who doesn’t yet have gray hair looks that age to me). I brought with me five checks totalling several thousand dollars, aiming to create an escrow account for a property my wife and I own, and I told the youngster that if we could reach an agreement whereby the bank would let me “save” my money there, instead of pilfering my account whenever the bank needed petty cash, I would deposit those checks into the existing savings account. Alas, to make a long story short, the “vice president” and I could not reach an understanding, and I approached the teller with a “memo advice” from the “vice president” to give me my few remaining dollars. The teller at first told me that there would be a $10 charge to close the account. I told her just to take whatever else the bank felt it needed of my money and give me what few dollars might be left so that I could get out of there before it disappered altogether, or, worse, before they calculated that I owed them money. Her supervisor reversed that closing charge, which made me deliriously happy to be able to escape with an additional $10 of my own money.
I left the bank and went to a credit union down the street. After waiting a tad, I was directed into the offices of the “Member Services” representative, a stern woman who obviously took her duties quite seriously. Her first pleasantries to me were “Driver’s license and Social card,” with her hand out palm up. After which she typed at a computer uninterrupted for several minutes. Our conversation next ventured into home address, mailing address, home phone, work phone, my employer, what the account was for (so she could figure out what kind of account I needed, I guess), and on and on, each question punctuated by a couple dozen computer keystrokes. At some point, I meekly interrupted to inject that I needed my wife to be on the account, which she brushed aside with the statement that “She will need to come here personally to do that.” I pictured my wife taking off work for an hour or so to provide the exact, same information that I was already providing.
Accessibility was the reason that I had wanted an account at the nearby bank or credit union in the first place. I imagined what a convenience it would be to have the money within a block or two of work. At that point, though, as the “Member Services” representatives clacked away on her computer, it dawned on me that the mind-numbing bureaucracy of dealing with these once-neighborly financial organizations cancelled out any perceived advantage of geography. Sitting there while being processed with no greater care than a chicken gone to glory being packaged for a meat rack at Winn-Dixie, it occurred to me that my wife and I already had a joint CMA account at a local brokerage, and I really didn’t need all this. Sure, the CMA account was not conveniently within walking distance, but it was, definitely, a mere phone call away from a transaction. I halted the credit union process, took my DL and SS card, picked up my sheaf of checks, thanked the lady for her trouble, and retreated out of doors into the breathtaking sauna that is Mississippi in August, but that seemed to me to be the fresh air of sanity.
Mulling over my experience, I wondered when and just how we transitioned from the friendly banker who could take a moment out of his busy day to open a tiny savings account for a little boy who might one day grow into a profitable customer, into the grasping, impersonal institutions we have to deal with today. My first impulse was to blame it on the financial meltdown and the resultant spasm of regulation, or maybe it was the nearly irrational fear of terrorism and its possible use of our banking system for all manner of dastardly deeds, or maybe the banks were scrambling for a few bucks in the deflated economy like everone else.
But then I thought back several years ago when I was in practice, and several years before financial collapse. I had had a trust account at Deposit Guaranty since the 70’s, always with impeccably unobtrusive, silent service. DG’s successor at first did fine. Then they were taken over by a financial conglomerate out of Nashville, and started imposing service charges on my trust account. I was able to talk to the few officers remaining from the DG days, all of whom were local, to get the practice stopped. Soon after they were all retired or moved on to other businesses, though, the practice started up again. My secretary got it corrected yet again, for a few months, and then it started up again and could not be changed.
So I took time out of my day to travel downtown to the marble-halled mega-bank and met with an efficient young (no gray hair, so I guess she was around 11) female corporate representative wearing a gold plastic conglomerate name plate. The young lady was nice enough, I suppose, but there was a disconcerting air about her, a hint of what you might see on the Military Channel when they depict a Nazi prison camp with its smiling but insistent matron-in-charge who addressed any disagreement with a painful snap of the crop. I explained to her as tactfully as I could that the law did not allow me, or any other lawyer, to earn any interest on a trust account, and that other banks did not charge a service charge. The advantage to her bank, I tried tactfully as I could to lay out for her that the bank could use the funds free of charge until I needed to do a transaction. She responded through glazed eyes that her mega-bank generally dealt with large corporate accounts, and that they were really not equipped to deal with (read “not interested in dealing with”) these “small accounts” like my little $30,000 trust account. I pointed out that $30,000 was a lot of money to me and my clients, and that I would prefer to have it in a local bank that would not find my little sum too much of a bother … and would not charge me a service charge. I walked out of there with a check and opened a new trust account at another bank.
All of this made me think about how the banks and credit unions, once proud to render a community service to handle your trust account, or your little estate or guardianship account, now want that business only if it’s worth millions and only if the bank stands to make lots of $$$$.
So, I’m sad that we’ve come to this, even in my little Mississippi town where I’ve lived and made my career, where there are lots more people of modest means who need honest, friendly, helpful banking services than there are multi-trillionaires with enough money at hand to buy the entire town (FYI for any of you anonymous trillionaires … I will sell you guys my residence for cash money at appraised value).
Now, I am not advocating for a return to the Andy-of-Mayberry days of my childhood banking experience. Somewhere, though, we’ve made something so easy, that could even be pleasurable, into a major travail. Am I naive and unrealistic in thinking that we should be able to do business without being so, well, business-like? Am I being unreasonable?
Maybe in my dotage I am morphing into another whiney Andy Rooney. I hope not. I try to be reasonable about most things. Just don’t get me started about air travel nowadays. See, we took this trip to Baltimore back in May, and …
The Better Chancery Practice Blog 
Wow. This writing made my day. About 20 years ago I lived in Texarkana Texas and opened an account at a local credit union (with excellent personal customer service). I had a savings account, a checking account and a mastercard through them. I financed 4 cars through this credit union, obtained a signature loan, and consolidated some other bills…..All total, well over 100,000.00 over the years. All payments were made on time and all loans paid off on time or earlier. I got to a point where I didn’t keep much money in the account, because it was out of town and I used “local” banks (or banks that were closer to me) for my financial needs. I kept the account open with about 300.00 in a savings account and I still occasionally used the credit card to keep it active (always paid in full immediately). I assumed the savings account would be earning a little each year and that at some point I would call on them again to serve my financial needs whether it be a car, or a house, or whatever. I never paid attention to the statements they sent me because I had not used the account in several years other than the occasional credit card purchase to keep it active. I was hoping to open the statement someday years from now and find great pleasure in the new, higher savings account balance that I assumed it would show…..I should have opened a statement…..My 300.00 dwindled to 0.00 (yes, zero). They began charging me “dormant” fees every 6 months, several years ago, then, they began charging the fees every month because there had not been activity within the previous 6 months (deposits or withdrawals in the savings account (the credit card apparently did not “count”)). When I called, the lady on the other end couldn’t care less. When I asked her to cancel the accounts including the credit card, she said “sir, there was really no need to call, once the account hit 0.00 we automatically cancelled everything, thank you, buh-bye” and she hung up.
Yessir. Welcome to banking and credit unioining in the 21st century.
Yeah, I get it now. I just never expected it. I’m curious to see what the credit report says. If it says “cancelled by credit grantor” or “cancelled due to inactivity”? This actually makes a difference in one’s credit score. I’ll check it soon and will post it ,for what it’s worth. This just happened a couple of weeks ago.
I think I’d like to present a print-out of this article to the “local folks” at Renasant Bank the next time they take an unauthorized charge out of my trust account; or mention referral to mandatory arbitration for disputes relating to accounts which pre-date the adoption of that nonsense (and a term to which I have never agreed nor will I submit unless a court rules that I must). “Don’t get me started . . . .”
Judge I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people tell me about how they chose an insurance company or bank because it had “local folks”. That what the institutions want you to think. Once you have problems, all of a sudden the “local folks”, who are merely a front to hook you in, say that it is out of their hands and must be handled at “the Jackson office”. That is not what the people understood when they began the realtionship and not what they bargained for – they want to be able to see at church, ball games, the grocery store, etc. the person responsible for their business. Caveat Emptor (sp?)!
Yep. It’s changed. That neighborly stuff may still be true in towns like Quitman, DeKalb and Carthge, but it’s all about the bottom line in towns like mine. Sad in a way.