Shredderfood.Com

Wow – been a while.

I hate banks.  I hate bankers, I think when the glorious peoples revolution comes, they should be the first ones against the wall. (just kidding–sortof)

I think we should nationalize the banks, because as inept as the federal government can be it’s a simple equation:

inept != evil

Anyone who follows me on twitter (both of you) know that I’ve had a btt of a border skirmish going on with my local bank. (Well there’s no such thing as ‘my local bank’ anymore is there – my “local” bank is based out of Buffalo, NY)

I’ve been banking with Merchants and Traders “M&T” Bank (www.mtb.com) since they acquired my last bank, Provident.  I’ve also been planning to leave for some time yet, but it hadn’t reached danger level yet.

I loved Provident, best customer service ever, convenient branches, Sunday hours, and a branch where I could walk in and EVERYONE there knew me.  You know, like Cheers, only serving money instead of bad beer.

All good things must end. M&T bought them, they called it a merger, but it wasn’t. There is nothing left of the bank I was so happy with. Customer service is gone, my local branch is closing, and no more Sunday hours (and severely curtailed saturday hours – what’s the point of being open for 3 hours – seems like a waste of a lot of paperwork?)

M&T is also closing up half it’s branches in Virginia, Maryland, and DC, in fact in my area there is now a 40 mile radius without a branch, which would force me to drive 20 miles in any direction to find a place to drop a damned check off.  They’re laying off employees and cutting branch hours.

This is the picture of a bank in trouble mind you.

So the *whole* story.

About two months ago, I got a call from the branch manager of my branch. Seems when the account was opened the agent who helped me forgot to get me to sign a piece of paper.

I signed the paper – end of story, right?

Nope, another month goes by and I get an illiterately written letter from my branch manager, but suspiciously not signed. In approximately 10 days my account was to be closed.

That very same day I walked the letter into the branch and quite literally said “what the fuck?”. (For added effect, I wrote it on the bottom of the letter.)

The teller explained to me that it’s a minor oversight, that corporate probably didn’t get the signed form (that I signed) and that it was nothing to worry about.  Mike (the manager) would take care of it first thing the next morning.

When asked what to do about the letter, I was told to…”Ignore it – if you don’t hear from us everything is ok.”  (**WARNING** never depend on negative notification when something bad might happen – lesson learned.)

April 15th – I get paid, deposit my paycheck in said account and go online and schedule online payments for some of the larger bills and more pressing bills to get them out of the way.  I always schedule bill payments at the receiving site, not the sending site.  Bank of America cured me of that habit.

April 16th comes along, the day the letter said my account was to be closed.  All is good.  Bought lunch and something stupid or another, debit card works wonderfully.

April 17th.  Nothing.  NO letter, no notice nothing.  I go to use my card…DECLINED.  I log into web banking (since I have other accounts I can still GET to web banking) and the account was closed and over 3100.00 was withdrawn.

I call customer service.  Fat lot of good they do, they are great at helping you transfer funds or look up a check, when pressed with the question “Where’s my fucking money.” you get a lot of blank stares with foreign accents.

So I spend the weekend stressed.  I can’t get a hold of the companies with whom I’ve scheduled bill payments until Monday, by which point the payments have already been attempted.  Not to mention that to this point, NO ONE CAN TELL ME WHERE MY MONEY IS.  The best answer I got is that it must have been withdrawn at the branch. (Lie #1)

Monday I call the bank and spoke directly to the branch manager, who I’ve had a pretty good relationship with up until now.  “No problem, we’ll get it worked out and get the account re-opened for you.”  (Lie #2)  “I’ll call you this afternoon when it’s done.” (Lie #3)

Tuesday I call the bank “I’m having trouble getting a-hold of the person who closed the account, she’s the one who has to re-open it” (Warning – maybe Lie #4) “I’ll call you before 3pm and let you know where it stands.” (Lie #5)

Tuesday at 6pm (branch closes at 7) I call the bank.  Ask for Mike, teller tells me he’s with a customer and can she have him call me back.  “No thanks, I’ll hold.” -my response.

She comes back and again, tells me that he’s still with a customer, but that my problem is being worked on (Lie #6), and that he’ll call me back in the morning.  -WRONG-  I tell her this can’t wait for morning and thank you, but I’ll hold.

Mike gets on the phone and tells me:

* It’s absolutely their fault for losing the paperwork in the first place (working on getting that in writing)

* corporate is unable  (refusing) to re-open the account

* a check is being cut as we speak

* I can expect it in 5-7 business days

Now mind you that 5 days have already gone by since the day they stole my money.  I’m supposed to wait another week to ten days?  (unlike banks, I measure time as it passes, not what it looks like on a fucking calendar)

I don’t fucking think so.  Tonight I’m drafting a warrant-in-debt.  In virginia it only costs $35 to file a lawsuit and you don’t need a lawyer to do it.

I’m thinking a few extra thousand for putting me through this, the damage to my perfect payment history with my mortgage company, etc. are all in order.   (I’ve re-scheduled the payment from a different account, if they don’t close *THAT* one I should be good)  I’m lucky in that it happened during a time when it’s not a life-or-death problem for me.

Because *THEN* you’d be reading about me somewhere else.  You put my kids at risk there will be more than words.

Banks can #suckit

If we want to reign in the deficit let’s start by fixing the absolutly stupid way our government spends money.  And let’s *START* with the defense contractors, not exclude them like everyone wants to.

This business of “I have to spend the money or I won’t get it next year” has got to stop.  It’s a large part of the reason we’re in this mess.

I spend a lot of my time working at a government agency and I watch it happen every time Q4 rolls around.  Suddenly everyone has money they have to spend and by gods they’re going to spend it, even if it’s on useless shit no-one is going to ever touch.

In one equipment cage someone has abandoned almost 200 SunRay2 client workstations.  They were bought with end-of-year money but there were actually no plans to ever put a virtual desktop infrastructure in place.

In another cage there are several hundred old Dell workstations that have been upgraded.  They are still in support.

You get the idea.  I dig through the floor and find cables that are run from one side of the datacenter to another, capped and terminated on both ends, with no actual use.  (This was the fault of the government contractor, not the agency itself.)

And I’ve been in defense contractors that have literally dumped millions of dollars into projects they KNEW were set to be cancelled just to get the money on their books.

Now don’t get me wrong, (full disclosure)  *I* am a government contractor.  However, I’m also the one who flat-rates a 40-hour week and then regularly works 60 hour weeks to ensure I get the job done.

We as a people could eliminate the deficit without laying off massive numbers of people by simply being smart about how we (agencies) spend our(American’s) money.

1. Find a way to provide incentive for government agencies to save money.  Offer a 10% bonus for savings, recognition, etc.

2. Stop with the “you didn’t spend it last year so you don’t get it this year.” bullshit.  Needs change from year to year and this practice does nothing but forces agencies to spend money uselessly.

3. Understand that shit happens.  Allow government agencies to apply-for and pull from discretionary funds for unforseen/emergency spending with justification and approval.

4. Motivation is key – Get the unions out of government offices.  The reason federal employees are so lethargic is because they know it’s almost impossible to fire them.  Unions just make this worse.

5. Get rid of the GS payscale system.  When a federal employee gets to Step-10 of their pay-scale, they know there are no significant future increases in their pay coming.   Therefore they have no motivation to do anything over and above “their job.”  Federal employee payscales should equal private industry payscales, to attract the best and brightest of the industry.  (As an example, if you are hired as a GS14-Step10, you take the job knowing you’re never going to get a significant pay-raise for merit.)

I’m curious as to other suggestions my 4 readers might have.

Well – I may have beat all the odds and stayed afloat through the bulk of the downturn, despite the fuckers in the banking industry who’s entire goal it seemed was to make sure I failed.

Well I’d like to give a hearty fuck-you to the worst offenders.

American Express

At the start of it all I was doing well.  The business was turning between $250k and $350k/year in consulting.  I was earning the frequent flyer miles like mad and was regularly writing checks to AmEx for between $5k and $10k each month.  They were making a killing off me because they took a percentage of EVERY SINGLE purchase I made with my card.  And to listen to the vendors *THEY* were paying the brunt of it, not me.

When they panicked and randomly decided to close my accounts (stranding me in Tampa, Florida I might add) my consulting work got cut in half, because the way it works is that I front the travel expenses and get reimbursed, with which they got their money.  It’s fucking how AmEx sold me on their stupid $600/year annual fee (for all of the travel bonuses of a Platinum card – which I have to admit were nice.)  If I can’t travel, I have to stick to my region.  I’m lucky enough that my region includes DC, and (barely) stretches to RTP in North Carolina and the NYC metro area.  There continued to be enough work there to keep me busy through the recession.

So they took their fee, and dumped me, forcing me to cut back on travel and to start turning away almost $150k in business in the first year.

Fuckers.  They started the slow spiral, and their bullshit is why instead of hiring 3-5 people this year I ended up going it alone.  So their bullshit kept 5 engineers out of work just in my one case.  Multiply that by all of the small businesses they probably fucked and you’ve got a strong case for American Express being the principal cause of the current unemployment numbers.  I wouldn’t cry if their offices burned to the ground tomorrow.  Not one single fucking tear.

Then Comes Bank Of America

The original evil empire.  Second only to American Express because while they did cost me quite a bit of money, American Express cost me more.

BofA Developed a nasty habit of randomly placing 10-14 day holds on my deposits in order to ensure that the bills I’m trying to pay like a good little businessman were bouncing sky high (to the tune of $35/occurence, $350/day)

Most of my deposits were made by wire-transfer…not paper.  No waiting for checks to clear, see where I’m going?

They also process debits from biggest to smallest, to ensure that they collect as many of the $35/each fees for bounces as they can get.

It works this way.  You have $900 in the bank.  You deposit another $1,000 but the bank places a 14-day hold on it.

You write checks for $1000, $250, $100, $50, and go to starbucks a half dozen times at $5/each.  They continue honoring the debit card transactions without even warning you that you’re racking up $35 fees for each one.

Now when they do their nightly processing, if the bank processes from smallest to largest, the only thing that bounces is the $1,000 check.  But when they process it from largest to smallest, everything below that bounces, so it’s a difference of them being able to charge you $37 and (9*$35=$315)

So not only did they cause the overdraft in the first place by sitting on money you’ve deposited (earning interest I might add from the day you deposit it) they engineer the situation so that you get even more thoroughly raped without the benefit of lube.

I’m starting to look much more kindly on bank robbers..  They’re doing the public a service.