You May See a Rainbow.......

You may not remember, but I mentioned seeing a fantastic rainbow while having dinner at a downtown restaurant last month. Some wonderful person sent me this link to photos he had taken. I hope you enjoy them!

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I found out today, quite by accident, that I have had the wrong type of business account for 24 years. No wonder my service charges have been exorbitant. I have been to this bank a number of times over the course of that 24 years; complaining about the amount of money I have to pay for service charges, and not once in all those times, has anyone ever told me that I have the wrong type of account. I feel used and abused! I have been paying a minimum of $15 per month basic service charges for an account that should be much less. What do you think are my chances of getting some of that money back? And how should I go about it?

A reward for the customer service rep who told me about it is in order too, I think, or at the very least, a letter of commendation. I could have kissed her feet when she told me she was changing the account to one that requires no minimum balance, no service charges and no fees for the first 150 transactions. I feel like the guy who found the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow!

You Can Bank On It!

Mr. kenju and I have a safe deposit box at our bank, which we have had since about 1982. We got the box when we got the checking account, which was a charter account when that bank first opened.

Having a charter account meant several things; mainly that we would never incur service charges on the account and we would get the use of a safe deposit box at no charge for the life of the account - even if - the bank was bought out by another bank.

For many years, that was true. Through two buy-outs; first it was called SBR then CCB and now BB&T. I have discovered it really pays to read your bank statements with a fine-toothed comb.

At least twice in the last 4 years, they have automatically charged us $35 rental on the box. First on my business account (which was not the charter account) and now on our shared charter account. When they charged my account for it, I went to the bank and discussed it with the customer service person. She agreed that I had been wrongly debited and she restored the amount to my account.

When the charge showed up in the account that we share - but mr. kenju administers - I made him aware of it and he called the bank. That was about 7 days ago. We heard nothing, so today he called again. Of course, it must be a rule that you can never speak to the same person twice, so we didn't get satisfaction, just the run-around.

I have no idea what they will say or how long it will take to get an answer, but if they don't remove the charge, I have decided to close my business account there and also close the safe deposit box. This bank has done nothing for me over the last ten years except raise the service charges to intolerable levels, and I am tired of it. So I will be happy to close that account and find a bank that will be happier to have my business account. You can bank on it!

Have you incurred problems with your bank? How did you handle it?

Don't Ever Do This!

Last Friday morning, I got this email from my bank. I clicked on the link, even though at that exact moment I had a sinking feeling in my belly that I was doing the wrong thing. Luckily, the window that came up said "Page cannot be displayed". Otherwise, my business might be in deep trouble financially.

I decided to print the email and take it to my bank, and when I showed it to one of the VP's, she said it is definitely a fraud. She told me, "We will NEVER email you for ANY reason. No bank will ever email a client."

I asked her if I had done any damage by clicking on the link, and she said I had not, since I didn't enter any identifying information. The person who fabricated this email is looking for passwords. I am so thankful he didn't get mine!

The oddest thing is that when I printed the email, instead of just the message above, I got what you see here below as well. At that point, I KNEW it was a fraud. I am hoping that this person can be caught, but apparently bad writing alone will not get him a jail sentence.

According to the bank rep., I am not the only person to bring them a similar email; however, the other ones have different stories. Perhaps the person hell-bent on computer fraud is also a frustrated writer. When he is finally caught, he will have a lot of time to write - in prison.