Wainwright Bank Stole My Grocery Money

[redheadedmuse.livejournal.com]

After almost 10 years of doing business with Wainwright, I finally jumped ship this week after they charged me almost $100 in overdraft fees - even though my statement shows no overdraft at all.

As I said in my open letter to them, this is not just my issue. Banks are poised to rake in over $38 billion in overdraft fees this year, and Congress has just approved new regulations making the kind of sneaky accounting and overdraft "protection" racket Wainwright is using illegal. Those regulations haven't gone into effect yet, but I would have hoped our neighborhood "progressive" bank would be ahead of the curve in this important social justice issue.

I'm disappointed that a local bank that advertises itself as "banking on values" would treat its customers this way. It's a deceptive and predatory practice that traps financially marginalized people in a painful cycle of debt they can't get out of. Shame on you, Wainwright.

Comments

[ron_newman]

I suggest that you walk into their office and talk to them directly about it again. Tell them about your blog post. Maybe I'll print it out and bring it in, too.

[redheadedmuse.livejournal.com]

That was the very first thing I did. The letter I linked to above is long, so I didn't repost it fully here, but it's a recap of the long conversation I had with the bank manager.

[ron_newman]

Who was the manager that you talked to? I'm sending an e-mail about this to every @wainwrightbank.com address that I have in my mail database, with links to this LJ post and your blog post.

I'd like to cc it to you, but I can't find your e-mail address anywhere on your blog or your LJ profile.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

It's not vigilante action if we call it a grassroots effort. :-)

[ron_newman]

Here's the e-mail I sent to 15 e-mail addresses @wainwrightbank.com (some of which will probably bounce since they are years old):

Subject: Bad customer service at Davis Square branch

A friend of mine had a very bad customer service experience this week at your Davis Square branch, where the bank incorrectly charged her $92.97 in fees for an overdraft that never occurred. Instead of fixing the problem and refunding the fees, the branch manager gave her a totally false and bogus explanation, causing her to close her account and move it to a nearby competitor. Her story is posted on the Davis Square LiveJournal at

http://community.livejournal.com/davis_square/2023338.html

and to her own blog at

http://childwild.com/2009/12/02/wainwright-bank-stole-my-lunch-money/

I've been a Wainwright customer for over nine years, and have always appreciated your bank's friendly and personal customer service, community service, and social responsibility. But you were not helpful to my friend, and her experience was sufficiently bad that I may withdraw my money unless the bank apologizes to her and refunds her wrongly-charged fees. The Davis Square LiveJournal has over 2000 members, some of whom may also be motivated to move their money elsewhere because of this. Please "Do the Right Thing" and protect your bank's hard-earned reputation. Thanks for listening.

Even though I'm not a customer...

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

This story makes it even less possible that I'll switch to them at some point.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

for whatever it's worth, i'm currently shopping a new bank and wainwright is on the short list...though i'm not sure after this.

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

But that's not enough.

On Daily Kos this week was the story about someone who had a $5000 check deposit held up for a week "to clear" at Bank of America, forcing a trip cancellation. He wrote top management and the hold was lifted (the national bad publicity may have contributed). But, will Bank of America be changing its policy of sitting on large check deposits? Of course not.

What's important is that Wainwright change the policy, not the apology to one person.

Who gets the interest?

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

During that week? BOA? The issuing institution? There is a conflict of interest somewhere.

Re: Who gets the interest?

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

You have to ask? (BOA, of course)

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

If you hear anything back from them, I hope you'll post and let enveryone know (in a new post, since this one is getting unweildy).

redheadedmuse is a friend of mine, and I would be so thrilled to hear she got her money back.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Redheadedmuse made a mistake, didn't have enough money in the account when the student loan bill came in, and that's not the banks fault. What do you want the bank to do?

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Charge fees based on chronological order of debit transaction, not largest item first, that's what we want the bank to do.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Sure, but that's not the way any bank does it.

While Wainwright may be a better bank than others, it's still a bank, and still has the job of making money for it's owners. It's not a non-profit.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Except, as you fail to notice, banks do NOT clearly state this practice to their customers.

That IS deceptive.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Have you actually read the small print?

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Wait, this is coming from the same person who blogged that In fact much of the culture and policies are intentionally designed to make people fail.

Yes, i actually did read the fine print - every time I join a new bank.

And no where, in any of the fine print that was provided to me, was there any mention of processing bigger, BUT later, debits first.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Yes, this coming from the same person who said that much of society is designed to make people fail. Banks included. For-profit business requires that you lose, so that they can win.

And I do indeed hope that we can find a way to move past this zero-sum approach to life.

But railing against Wainwright for doing what all banks normally do (make money off of fees) is not going to get us there, as far as I'm concerned.

[cos]

> But railing against Wainwright for doing what all banks normally do

Wainwright's corporate image is as a socially responsible bank that's more ethical than other banks, and does better for our community. That's how they drew a lot of customers from larger banks around here. When they fail to live up to that stated, public aspiration, railing against it is exactly what we should do.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Better to spend your limited resources creating something positive, I'd say. Why not start a Davis Square community credit union non-profit-bank so that we can be in charge of our own money and invest it even more directly in the community?

[cos]

I think you'd be better off spending your limited resources ceasing your pointless comment crusade to convince everyone else here that the perfectly reasonable and *useful* things they're suggesting are useless. Your cynicism on this matter is not "creating something positive" so why are you wasting so much of your time?

[turil.livejournal.com]

Because I'm doing what I do, trying to get people to think. If people didn't enjoy talking to me, they'd stop. But people do like to think. People do like to challenge themselves. So I offer what I can. I'm not perfect, but I do manage to sometimes help people find more creative and positive ways to live.

The fake Spare Change guy must have talked to you then.

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

He did find a more creative and positive way to live: scamming people.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

...But if you mainly hope to win customers from Bank of America by marketing your values, participating in this most unethical of business practices would be the business equivalent of shooting one's self in the foot.

It is basically stealing, but they get away with it because there are a lot of gray areas in this country's system of bank regulation. Think about it:

As of 9 am your account has a balance of $100. At 9:01 am you use your debit card to buy a $2 cup of coffee. Your account now has a balance of $98 (at least in theory). At 4:59 pm, you purchase groceries totaling $101. VOILA! You are charged for TWO overdrafts! And the only justification is that the bank is free to "process" your transactions in any order they want (rather than the order in which they actually happened).

I guess my point is that a lot of people, including myself, put up with the inferior rates and inferior online banking system and scan number of ATMs because they believe very strongly that banks should not try to pad their bottom lines at the expense of their most financially strapped customers. If they're not willing to do that to win my business, what's the point of making all these sacrifices?

[adaptively.livejournal.com]

This. Why not keep a balanced checkbook?