Idiotic Business Behavior by Large Banks, A Lesson to Be Learned

When I run my business we run into "situations" or more precisely, difficult customers, when you really want to rather not have that customer instead of doing all the extra work it requires to maintain that customer. But never in my clear mind did we imagine going through something that I just encountered at Bank of America, one of our banks for 20 years. It was a simple situation, they set us up for a type of checking account that somehow stipulated that if we did not maintain $10,000 balance we would be charged a $20 monthly maintenance fee. Since I'd never paid monthly fee for our personal or the business accounts of allelebiotech.com, I probably did not bother to ask why the change. The things got tough in late 2008 to early 2009, I had to scramble all personal funds to not lay off employees, who were going through their own personal difficulties especially the younger ones who were paid by hourly.

Now things are better, I get to pay myself a salary again and pay more attention to my own bank accounts, and one of the things I noticed was that I was being charged a $20 fee at some point during the last 12 months. I asked for a refund for a long term customer's sake, got rejected; then I asked to be removed of any such future fees because my business banks always offer unconditional free checking to all my employees, and got rejected again because "the fee was charged correctly". They did offer a solution, go online open a new checking account since all new accounts opened online will be free of fees.

I did open a new account online, and all its online banking features are exactly the same as the checking account I have been using for 20 years, and online for maybe 10 years. Now I have to redo all my automatic payer and payee accounts, direct deposit, transfer routes... to save $20 a month using exactly the same service. If BOA meant to get a protocol right to charge fees while being able to attract new customers through free checking and encouraging online users to save labor costs, they succeeded, I understand their unspoken business reasons. But it they meant to bother customers to a degree that they would rather leave, they have sure succeeded in a unique way, by which business sense no longer aligns with common sense. The inflexibility they demonstrated through their lower level representatives is quite impressive, I would not allow such handling in my own company. It's simple, the cost to attract and maintain a loyal customer like myself, for 20 years, would be so much higher than somehow partially refunding the $20 fees, or a simple management check to remove future fees without forcing me to open a new account.

I see this as a business real situation lesson, and I know I will be fine doing all my business at my business banks. I am just not quite sure if I should also get rid off all my BOA shares, that may seems like an emotional decisions rather then business though...Oh I also will write to my congressmen and my president not to support more bailout money, they encourage bad business attitude.