Why I don’t Like Banks

I’ve never gotten along well with Banks of any kind, but especially with those larger, faceless National Institutions of organized robbery.

For a long time I suspected I was simply bothered, not by their aggressive profiteering (especially at the expense of the lower- and middle-class), but by their sheer duplicity – having weaseled their way into the pseudo-governmental “Federal Reserve” and eliminated a constitutionally-guaranteed inflation-free currency, they nonetheless extract levels of profit considered by most historical examples as usury – all justified by some false representation of themselves as a public service(!).

But I realized today that my distaste comes from something much more concrete, and direct.

They cheat.

Here’s a case in point:

Freddy Mangum and I had filed online with Bank of America, to open up a new, joint checking account. This is a stop-gap measure to attach to an upcoming iPhone App (currently in the Apple review queue), since we’ve not set up a formal C-Corp for this partnership.

I was, as usual, traveling, when Bank of America called me on my cell (finally) to confirm that I wanted the account. I told them, “Yes”, emphatically, and asked for the Account number, so that I could complete the forms on the Apple website.

They told me that they couldn’t provide me with that information – it violated their privacy policy.

I should have just kept my mouth shut.

Instead, I told them their policy logic was broken; if they trusted me to approve an account, they must also trust me with the account information, right?

They hung up.

The next day, Freddy called to tell me that Bank of America had closed the account, citing risk concerns regarding Joshua McKenty that they were not at liberty to discuss with him. He gave me the number, and I gave them a call.

Eliseo (no last name available), in the “Account Risk Closures” department, told me that the account had been closed because I had hung up on them during account verification! And that when they called me back, it had gone directly to voicemail.

False.

I asked him who I could complain to – he told he that he was the end of the road, but that he couldn’t actually do anything. He said that the account files are locked after 48 hours, so he couldn’t even add a note on the file anyway.

He also said that, because of this action, they would also close all my other Bank of America accounts.

I asked him who I could escalate my complaint to, or if he could provide contact info for a banking ombudsman within Bank of America. He said that it was my right as an American, to take any further actions that I chose, but that he had other calls waiting and “…did you have any further questions regarding your account closure?”

I searched the Bank of America website for the words “Complaint” and “Ombudsman” without turning up any results. A Google search turned up several third-party sites filled with complaints about Bank of America’s apparently fraudulent practices, but no official sites.

I found (of course) a lot of links to the Canadian banking ombusdman, so I called them and asked for their US counterpart (which they were happy to provide). Eventually this led me to http://www.helpwithmybank.gov/, and this startling page:

The bank closed my checking account and did not notify me. Is this legal?

Yes. Generally, national banks may close deposit accounts for any reason (e.g., inactivity or low usage) and without notice. Federal banking laws and regulation do not address the closing of deposit accounts.

This issue is governed by the Deposit Account Agreement you received when you opened your account. Review that Agreement, and contact your bank directly for more information.

Wow. So I can pay out $30-50 for a bunch of nice checks, drawn against my new bank account, and then have the account shut down overnight, without notice?

I was curious to see how much money these banks were making off checking fees (and overdraft fees as well, following up on some of those other consumer complaints).

The https://cdr.ffiec.gov/public/ website provides quarterly financial reports of all National banks, so I went there and did a quick search for “Bank of America”.

Although the line items in the report are a little obfuscated (TEXT4462 links to “Customer and other Miscellaneous Fees”, and TEXT4463 links to “Intercompany Procesing Fee Income”), I was able to extract a couple of interesting numbers.

Bank of America made more than $77 Million dollars from the “printing and sale of checks” – in the past three months.

How handy that, at least for my account, they’ll never have the expense of CLEARING those checks – they can simply hang up on me, and close the account.

Oh, one other (probably innocuous) tidbit:

a. Aggregate amount of all extensions of credit to all executive officers, directors, principal shareholders, and their related interests:

$296,743,000.00