BlueRonin

I ended a relationship today.

Not the one with my girlfriend. No, this was a relationship with my bank.

When I came to Florida 20 years ago I had nothing but a guitar, a suitcase, and a few hundred bucks. Once I had a job, I opened a checking account at Southtrust Bank in Clearwater. I saw a lot of crazy stuff that NCNB/Nations Bank/Bank of America did to people, but I never had those issues with Southtrust. The tellers recognized me and I never had a problem with the bank. It’s the only bank I’d ever had in Florida, of a sort.

Southtrust became Wachovia. No real change, my bank just quietly did what I needed it to do, with never a problem.

At the end of June, Wachovia changed to Wells Fargo in this area. 2½ months later my 20 year old bank accounts are closed for good.

Long story short, I pay a lot of bills online. Since the switch was made to Wells Fargo, I have been unable to pay one of my creditors. This payment has been made every month for the last 11 years without issue until Wells Fargo took over. 2 months and several attempts later and Wells Fargo is still unable to deliver a payment for me. I’d be willing to cut them some slack if they would admit the problem and work to help me fix it, but their customer service basically tells me “the check is in the mail” and claims they cannot do anything. For each failed payment attempt, Wells Fargo got to sit on my money for a week since their minimum time for an online payment is 5 business days. The best part is that after each failed attempt, when I called customer service, they could not tell me where my money was. They could not even tell me if the payment cleared. This is especially galling since the payment never cleared, which means they had my money all along.

It occurs to me that banking with Wells Fargo is functionally equivalent to being bankrupt. So what if I have money in the bank if I’m unable to pay anyone?

I went to my local branch today and closed my accounts. The lady asked me why I was closing them and I said that the online bill payments simply didn’t work.

The smile left her face. “That’s pretty much what everybody is saying who closes an account now” she says. A little chit-chat and I get the impression that a lot of accounts are being closed for this reason. I mention that it’s got to be frustrating to be losing business over something she has no control over. She gives me a look that says I don’t know the half of it. I have not seen someone look so dejected in a professional capacity in a long time.

You’d think someone would wonder how a 20-year professional relationship could fall apart in 2½ months. This lady did. She obviously cared too. Nobody will ask her though. Wells Fargo customer service? I’m just one less person in their phone queue waiting for a scripted response designed to hide the fact that they have an issue. Wells Fargo management? Who knows if they care about anything other than today’s share price.

I’m still cleaning up the mess this has caused with one of my creditors. I’ve had enough of “too big to function.” It’s credit union time. Oh, and my rinky-dink credit union got a payment to this creditor in 2 days. Wells Fargo would have taken 5 business days at best, but even with 2 months they were unable to do it.

</rant>

Dear Bank who holds my MasterCard account,
20 years ago you loaned me money at a 12% interest rate. This allowed me to quickly furnish a new apartment. For that, I thank you.

I understand that our agreement allowed you (the lender) to change the terms of the agreement for me (the debtor). It was my understanding that this was an option for you to enact if you needed to based on market forces, bank interest rates, or the risk involved in my debt. I did not know that this would be used primarily as a method to enhance your revenue stream, and was totally disconnected from market forces or my ability to pay you.

I came to you with no credit history beyond a student loan. I had no savings, and a job less than 6 months old. You gave me a rate of 12%. Although I may have been a few days late a couple of times in the last 20 years I never missed a payment.

Over the last 20 years I have:

• Been continually employed, in one case for 13 years at the same company.
• Purchased a house.
• Built up savings.
• Increased my salary to 3 times what it was when I originally borrowed money from you.

In every measurable respect, my ability to repay you has grown substantially since I borrowed money from you.

In that same time, your conditions have changed as well:

• You saw your interest rate drop to essentially 0%.
• You stayed in business with the help of my tax dollars.
• You also went through several mergers, becoming much larger, which you claimed would allow you to provide me better service at a more competitive rate.

It would seem that since our agreement began, the cost of my debt has gone down for you while my ability to pay has gone up. Given these conditions, I find it troubling that every time I got a raise or was somehow able to increase the amount of my monthly payments, you raised my interest rate or changed my agreement and added new fees. As I made progress on repaying that loan, you took money that I borrowed at 12% and eventually raised the interest rate on it to over 22%. Although I have not borrowed any more money from you in well over 10 years, you have been receiving monthly payments from me that included finance charges of almost double what the terms were when you originally gave me the money.

You will notice on my account that I have repaid it in full. Actually, I paid about $50 too much, so you now owe me $50. This changes the basic nature of our relationship. As you are now the debtor and I am the lender, I am making the following changes to our agreement:

• Your interest rate is now 24,000%. This will result in a minimum monthly payment of $1000, and that will just cover the interest.
• Any month that ends with you still having a balance will result in a $50 service charge.
• Any payment sent to me will be subject to a $50 processing fee.
• Any payment that is late or below the minimum will result in a $100 penalty. This is in addition to the $50 charge for maintaining a balance.
• Any overpayment to me will be subject to a service charge equal to the amount of overpayment, and will be considered an immediate termination of our financial relationship.

As our agreement states that the leader can change the terms without reason and without consent of the debtor, I am within my rights to do this. I’ll go one step further and spell out the consequences of this to you, which you only recently started to do as a result of federal law:
Based on today’s balance, you can settle your account by getting a payment of $1050 to me by the end of the month ($1000 finance charge + $50 processing fee).
If you make the minimum monthly payment of $1000 every month you will bee making that payment forever since that payment only covers the interest and not my $50 processing fee.
To help you, I will inform you that if you miss your first payment, your balance will go from $50 to $1200 ($50 principal + monthly rate of 24,000% finance charge + $100 penalty + $50 balance maintenance fee). If you miss a second consecutive payment, your balance will be $1,201,350. If you miss a third payment you will be bankrupt, but due to the favorable laws you got passed through congress you will not be able to write off your debt to me and will instead have to liquidate the company.

Thank you for doing business with me!

p.s. Stop sending me crap in the mail about the great offers that you have for me and how willing you are to help me.

For three years I worked a block away from a Fourbucks Starbucks. It was an occasional indulgence when I didn’t feel like dealing with the office coffee machine. Now I work in a place with no coffee machine and no good options nearby. If I want to partake of the evil bean at work my only choice is to bring it there, and this has illustrated a point I was only dimly aware of when coffee was little more than an elevator ride away:

Starbucks cup lids suck.

Those lids turn every cup of coffee into a dribble cup. I noticed when I walked for coffee that I always seemed to spill some, but now that I’m driving it’s practically impossible to transport coffee without making a mess. I can rarely drink these things while standing still without at least some small amount of coffee escaping through some portion of the lid that is not the suck hole.

I think what really made me notice was a trip to Dunkin Donuts. Whoever makes those lids has it right. The roads are broken up around my work and I can still drive them fairly aggressively and be absolutely confident that not a single drop will escape the cup. Contrast that to Starbucks where I can’t even get out the door without licking coffee off of my hand.

As successful as Starbucks has been you’d think they could do a better job on something so fundamental to serving beverages.