Updates on dealing with banks

In earlier blogs I wrote how banks behaved in relevance to both of my business and personal accounts. I paid much attention as part of a learning experience because banks represent the type of business that my company deals with at the highest frequency among all commercial services. Previously I complained about CapitalOne for not making efforts to understand a situation that unfairly resulted in increase of interest rate. They later changed that and now gave my company the lowest rates among all accounts. I thought for a well that Discover was friendly and reasonable but it turned out that they increased our rate without notice to above 25% after agreeing on phone to reverse a rate increase, just the opposite to CapitalOne, and of course they are history, I closed the Discovery account never again will I have them for business funding needs.

Advanta's underwriting bank got into some trouble during last year's turmoil and shut down our account, and it was gone from our list of credit services for good as well after I paid it off quickly. What's funny is that for some reason Citi bank kept sending monthly statements to my home address, maybe thinking that linking my business account closer to myself would make it safer? After repeated problems of miss-delivered (to my old address) and late payment issues, we seemed to have cleared it all up by a bunch of phone calls and finally using our business address. However, just last week they decided to close our account based on these payment issues. It struck me that severe miscalculations that these large banks have through their staff that make judgment calls on customers' credit worthiness still exist after they run themselves to the ground, had to use your and my tax money for a bail out that almost tore apart our nation, cost me big losses on their stocks, now they tell us good customers that we do not deserve their services. The lesson learned, a company has to have a system for operations, but that system must have a common sense check point in place.

I am not against just citi bank, of which I am a share holder and I hope they would do well, for being quite stupid while probably feeling kinda smart on making such moves through their customer accounts; or BOA who completely messed up my personal account for more than 20 years and lost me as a customer for ever; or Union Bank who on one hand tried to lure my company's business, on the other hand had a bunch of really bad business people working on my issues. I closed BOA, then Union bank checking, loan, and cutting down the last dealing with them.

Just a blog for other peeps or biz to learn something from my first-hand dealing with these banks who contributed handily and heavily to troubles many of us are experiencing now. As a businessman, I will continue to find the best service, and take risks of getting funding to continue hire new people and helping my employees through the good time and the tough times. As an executive, I learn from other business and try to avoid doing things that are unreasonable, unethical, or plain stupid. As a scientist, I try to put more reasoning and logic in figuring out human factors in all these events.