“groovy mother...”

Bacon Begbie

Our Basset/Beagle Blend

Unsolicitated Untestimonial

When I moved to America six years ago, I opened a bank account with BankBoston. This decision was made based upon a wide variety of important criteria, the main ones being “Which bank is the first one I find when I search the web for Bank and Boston?” and “Which bank has a branch closest to work?”

They were swallowed up by Fleet a few years back, which is now in the process of being swallowed by Bank of America.

Over time, I’ve had a pretty good relationship with them. Their online and phone banking facilities have generally been excellent, and on the odd occassion that I’ve been hit by fees, it’s usually been my own fault. (And on the times that it wasn’t, their CSRs have made a decent effort to pay me back.)

But during our recent house-buying, I got hit in the groin by a shitty business decision of Fleet’s. I had an old checking account which has a $2000 overdraft. I was planning on using this overdraft to contribute towards our closing costs. However, since the account had been dormant for 6 months, and without any prior warning, Fleet closed the account. 4 days before we closed on the house.

I spent a good couple of hours on the phone with a CSR that night. No, there was no way they could resuscitate the account. No, there was no way they could create a new overdraft on our joint account in the next two days. It was all the computer. The computer rules over all. The computer closes accounts whenever it feels like it, and there is no way to stop it. In fact, since the account had had a zero balance for 6 months, the computer should have closed it 6 months ago. I should be grateful that it hadn’t been closed already.

Needless to say, I swore that I was leaving Fleet A.S.A.P. (But leaving a penny in each account so that the computer wouldn’t close them, which I’d transfer between the accounts every so often so they’d have to incur the cost of mailing me statements.)

So we opened accounts with Citizens Bank, who are the second largest bank in these parts. I was wary, because they’re owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland, who dicked me over severely when I was a student (and they were the only bank on campus), but I figured they were worth a shot.

Dear Lord, it makes me see that I’ve been lucky to have been with Fleet all these years!

In the course of one short month, they’ve sent us two boxes of checks (identically numbered, but one set has only my name on them, while the other has Joy’s and mine), accidentally changed our house number on their records (so mail mysteriously changed from going to 5 Berkeley St to 4 Berkeley St), and although Joy’s ATM card arrived over a week ago, I had to phone and request mine which still hasn’t arrived, making the account pretty much useless to me.

In addition, their customer phone system is pathetic. They ask you to punch in your Account Number, not your ATM card number (something you’re more likely to have on you). They ask you to punch in your SSN. And then, when you get to a human being, they ask you for all the information again.

So the question remains: Do I swallow my principals and stick it out with Fleet, for despite them being subjects to The Computer, they at least have an ounce of competance? Do I stay with Citizens, and hope they get better? Or do I go off searching again?