Recently, I had yet another bad interaction with a local retail bank, PNC, and I think I've just about had it with banks in general. A nosy teller noticed that I was making a high value check deposit into my IOLTA client funds trust account, and asked me where this check came from.
I replied, "I decline to say."
"Are you buying a house?"
Well, since the amount was related to a client, I thought instantly about client confidentiality and responded, "It's confidential."
She snidely countered, "It's bank policy against fraud, if there's a problem and my manager asks where this is from and I don't know, I can be fired."
Looking around, I saw there were other customers next to me; I didn't want to explain too much, so I finally said, "It's from a client."
Apparently, this was enough to satisfy her, but she gave me a dirty look and did her business without further hassle.
This also reminds me of many other times when I was making significant deposits, that each time the teller would ask me if I wanted to invest "my" money (despite it going into an IOLTA account -- it's not my money) into some kind of better financial product. No thanks. The pushier ones would even get their manager to come over and try to sell me their investments.
Once, I even tried to tell a PNC teller to put a note on my accounts to not ask me about my deposits -- you can be assured that this request did not go over well at all. In fact, she flat out rejected my request and said asking nosy questions and pushing sales of investment schemes (I'm paraphrasing) was a mandatory part of their job.
Banks couch their aggressive nosiness under the guises of "security" and "fraud prevention", but it's really because they want to turn your money into their profit. I don't have a problem with banks or any other business making money, but I do have a problem when banks pretend to be friendly and helpful, or when they try to scare customers with claims of "security", when they are in fact manipulative and look to milk customers, who may never know any better, for all they're worth.
Like when Wells Fargo opened up fake accounts and charged customers for such accounts, or when Wells Fargo charged customers bogus car insurance. Like when Bank of America cheated on its deposit insurance, or when it recorded customer calls without consent, or when it cheated homeowners by overcharging mortgage interest.
Local examples? Plenty. Citizens Bank directly stole from customers' deposits. PNC manipulated customers' deposits in order to hammer more overdraft charges. PNC also bled its own employees in not paying overtime wages.
Now, tell me how many of the banks were actually stopped from doing business (since corporations are now people, but real people go to jail for committing crimes), or how many bankers involved in each of these schemes went to jail?
Slightly more legal ways banks seek to profit come even with "free" checking, which now comes with lots of strings attached and involve complex fees if a certain balance is not maintained or some mandatory interaction with the bank is not met. This is all to generate fees from even basic checking accounts, which are hardly the loss leaders that banks have complained about. Banks are constantly trying to figure out the maximum amount of hassle a customer is willing to tolerate versus paying for peace of mind, whether it's an "overdraft protection fee", "account maintenance fee", or some other scheme.
The alternative? Perhaps credit unions with an ATM network alliance, since the only reason why I had a PNC account was because they had a lot of ATMs and branches with international experience. Or perhaps internet banks so you have a better choices on customer service, and at least you don't have to endure a teller's pettiness when you don't want to share your confidential information with them in a public space.
I replied, "I decline to say."
"Are you buying a house?"
Well, since the amount was related to a client, I thought instantly about client confidentiality and responded, "It's confidential."
She snidely countered, "It's bank policy against fraud, if there's a problem and my manager asks where this is from and I don't know, I can be fired."
Looking around, I saw there were other customers next to me; I didn't want to explain too much, so I finally said, "It's from a client."
Apparently, this was enough to satisfy her, but she gave me a dirty look and did her business without further hassle.
This also reminds me of many other times when I was making significant deposits, that each time the teller would ask me if I wanted to invest "my" money (despite it going into an IOLTA account -- it's not my money) into some kind of better financial product. No thanks. The pushier ones would even get their manager to come over and try to sell me their investments.
Once, I even tried to tell a PNC teller to put a note on my accounts to not ask me about my deposits -- you can be assured that this request did not go over well at all. In fact, she flat out rejected my request and said asking nosy questions and pushing sales of investment schemes (I'm paraphrasing) was a mandatory part of their job.
Banks couch their aggressive nosiness under the guises of "security" and "fraud prevention", but it's really because they want to turn your money into their profit. I don't have a problem with banks or any other business making money, but I do have a problem when banks pretend to be friendly and helpful, or when they try to scare customers with claims of "security", when they are in fact manipulative and look to milk customers, who may never know any better, for all they're worth.
Like when Wells Fargo opened up fake accounts and charged customers for such accounts, or when Wells Fargo charged customers bogus car insurance. Like when Bank of America cheated on its deposit insurance, or when it recorded customer calls without consent, or when it cheated homeowners by overcharging mortgage interest.
Local examples? Plenty. Citizens Bank directly stole from customers' deposits. PNC manipulated customers' deposits in order to hammer more overdraft charges. PNC also bled its own employees in not paying overtime wages.
Now, tell me how many of the banks were actually stopped from doing business (since corporations are now people, but real people go to jail for committing crimes), or how many bankers involved in each of these schemes went to jail?
Slightly more legal ways banks seek to profit come even with "free" checking, which now comes with lots of strings attached and involve complex fees if a certain balance is not maintained or some mandatory interaction with the bank is not met. This is all to generate fees from even basic checking accounts, which are hardly the loss leaders that banks have complained about. Banks are constantly trying to figure out the maximum amount of hassle a customer is willing to tolerate versus paying for peace of mind, whether it's an "overdraft protection fee", "account maintenance fee", or some other scheme.
The alternative? Perhaps credit unions with an ATM network alliance, since the only reason why I had a PNC account was because they had a lot of ATMs and branches with international experience. Or perhaps internet banks so you have a better choices on customer service, and at least you don't have to endure a teller's pettiness when you don't want to share your confidential information with them in a public space.
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