Sachin’s Posterous

Wow, BofA sucks. Way to go Sachin.

Crap like this pisses me off. I set up automatic money transfer from Chase Checking to ING Savings from the Chase end, and they charged me $3 for every transaction. I went into the branch and asked about it.

While there is a charge, it's fine print, and the guy spun it as the "other bank charging us" (which we pass on to you as the customer), and then tried to sell me on opening a savings account with them. I almost canceled my account. It feels like they're just robbing me.

I found that ING doesn't charge for transfers, if I did it from their end. Bastards everywhere.

I'd recommend switching to WAMU except for the fact that they no longer exist. About 2 years ago I blogged about my very similar experience with Bank of America, and also griped about the fact that BOA couldn't seem to figure out how to integrate into one database schema the accounts from banks they'd acquired. What a pain.

http://zachfine.com/blog/2007/06/08/finally-heeding-bank-of-americas-call-to-go-away/

I guess with the collapse of all of these exotic financial instruments, banks have just resorted to straight up taking your money.

I guess you have to be very vigilant. I realized I was getting charged a bunch of fees too. Gotta lay the smackdown on that.

I hate BofA too. Their customer service is always terrible! I was going to recommend some banks I researched during our move, but apparently they're all pretty local.

You should try Wells Fargo. We have most of our accounts through them (Savings, Checkings, Mortgage, etc) and they even give discounts when you have multiple accounts.

If you move to FL, let me know. I'll take care of ya. I'm at Regions...Private Banking. Peace!

I had a bunch of problems with B of A, when switching states I had Washington Mutual which I loved and Wells Fargo for the past few years with fantastic service!

Jesus, that's horrible. My wife had trouble switching states too. We still bank at BofA and I like them... I really like the online Billpay. But man, hearing horror stories like this...

go get em.

I signed up for the classmate website and inadvertantly signed up for the Great Funs website. They had been charging me $9 every month for a year. I did not check my Credit Card account. Now I check it all the time. Lesson learned.

Banks are all bad and they should be made out of business... welcome to open money. Do you know one business except banks where you can take money out of your client account without any notice, any time? Banks business is racket, they failed, let them crash and let us build a fair new system: open money, peer to peer lending...

mint.com keeps a good track of extra fees and charges. That way you can get an email/sms as soon as you get charged with an extra fee.

I didn't know about that feature in mint.com. I'll check that out. I've been using Yodlee to track all my accounts together, but it doesn't do anything fancy.

Very true about banks being the only business where they can take money out of your account. It's one of the reasons why i would never have a check card: i want to get a credit card statement and look it over before any real money is deducted

mint.com is quite good. definitely worth trying out.
For sure, reverting the fees on bank statement is pain. They waste so much of time to do the obvious.

Yeah, use mint.com it'll alert you to that stuff.

I'm still terrible about actually checking it, and even worse about following up on it. The hassle is not worth the $3, but at the end of the day it does kinda feel like they're stealing from me!!

Many (usually large) corporations (not just banks) play tricks like these and it can be very hard to break through.

Ten years ago I realised I'd had enough and started sending MY invoices to every commercial organisation that I felt was in one way or another wasting my time/money, just to put a monetary value on each case of bad service.

This is not something I do lightly - only as a very last resort - because no matter how kind, friendly and polite I keep my covering letter, it is generally perceived as an 'attack' and I guess, in a way, it is.

It usually does, however, get noticed, and make the receiver take action; so far every corporation I did this to/with at least got into gear and resolved outstanding issues, almost all issued refunds where those were due, and many paid my invoice, too.

But, like I said, it's a last-resort tactic (and generally only advisable if you don't owe the prospective recipient anything, if they don't hold anything that's yours, and if really you've already changed or made your decision to change service provider/supplier).

Sending invoices to the companies that mess with you? Now THAT'S hilarious!

Good work. Most are not as deligent.

Sachin, consider a credit union, if you have access to one. Re: mint.com, Yodlee: isn't Yodlee the back-end that most of these folks use? At least the banks, I think, if not mint.com.

Haha you people are funny, all Banks charge fees on accounts! They turned off a feature you set up on your account and gave you money back, whats the big deal?

SECU is the best credit union there is