Several years ago we had a family owned business that consisted of commercial real estate rental property. We sold the real estate and wound down the business. After all the wind down activities were complete, the last task was to distribute the corporation’s cash, which was its only remaining asset, to my brother, our father, and me. Brother requested a wire transfer, Dad preferred writing checks, I didn’t care. Dad wrote checks.
I walked into the regional bank I dealt with, the kind of place where the branch manager still had authority to make things happen, and deposited a $750k check into a money market account that already had $120k in it. I knew funds wouldn’t be available for several days so I’d have to wait to transfer it out to its final destinations. What I didn’t expect was for my low balance alert on that account text me at 8am three days later advising me my account balance was -110k.
I was sitting in my office at work, meeting with two other managers when the text came in. Glanced at my phone, showed them the text so they’d know why they were leaving my office immediately and they left without further prompting. Called my local branch. Lady that answered said the branch manager had a customer in his office but he had advised them to interrupt him if I called before he called me as he needed to speak to me. He said the $750k check was drawn on a closed account. Told him that’s swell, but what happened to the $120k that was there before the $750k was deposited? He looked it up on the customer portal so he could see what I was looking at and said he didn’t know why it showed a negative balance but the $120k was still there. I still had access to that and my other accounts. He asked if I knew what the deal was with the bad check. Told him a mistake involving an old man and an old bank account, but no malicious intent so no fraud or other criminality. He said being they knew me and my father, they figured it was something like that so they hadn’t referred it to their fraud department pending discussion with me.
My brother called twice while I was on the phone with my bank. Call him back. All his business and personal stuff was with Bank of America. He was running a business with employees, suppliers, customers. Haven’t heard him that wound up before or since. BOFA froze ALL his accounts, not just the personal one where he deposited the bad check. His regular banker referred him to their fraud department who told him they were investigating an irregular transaction, wouldn’t give him any further details, and wouldn’t tell him how long his accounts would be frozen. He couldn’t pay his suppliers, couldn’t pay his employees, and couldn’t process payments from customers. Only reason he knew the origin of the issue was because I told him. He was able to get his business accounts unfrozen in time to make payroll but it took some effort.
That regional bank that served us very well for many years merged with another regional bank and not long after the local managers no longer had authority to do much of anything. All the decision makers were like the Wizard of Oz, hiding behind a curtain of front line employees and low level managers stuck with defending their anonymous foot dragging decisions or lack of decisions to customers. Customers never communicate with anyone with any authority.
Started banking with Wachovia. They were great for many years. They merged with First Union, went to Wizard of Oz model, and we left for BB&T. BB&T was great for many years. They merged with SunTrust, went to the Wizard of Oz model, and we left for Fidelity Bank NC/VA. Seems like the size of the bank is inversely proportional to quality of services. Maybe I just don’t have enough money to play with the big banks.
