Banks of America
I have an accounting book that is published in the UK and I get a royalty check from them at least once a year. This last one has been a curious exchange.
First, the publisher notified me they had sent me a check many months before and they assumed I had never gotten it (I hadn’t) since it was never cashed. So, they sent me a replacement check. After about a month, I told them I had not gotten that check either. They next sent the check via FedEx or the like. It got here.
Second. the check was from the Royal Bank of Scotland and was in US dollars. Given when the original check was supposed to be issued (months ago) and when I got the check, the value of the dollar had fallen. Thus there were fewer dollars in the current check given the royalties are actually owed in pounds.
Third, when I took the check to Bank of America to deposit it, I was told that the routing number on the check was not for a US bank. Thus, the BofA cashier would have to fill out a form and send it for collection. I was used to this since the last few royalty checks I had received. This happened in mid December. Time passed. No deposit appeared in my account.
Fourth, a day ago (six weeks after giving the check to BofA) when I downloaded my latest transactions, I saw the royalty check had been deposited. However, it was for $56.42 less than the check I had given BofA. In talking to the cashier who had helped me with the collection, she looked online and told me that the Royal Bank of Scotland had charged me $16.42 to cash their own check and put it into my account and BofA had charged me another $40.00 as well.
Remember that the check was in USD. There was no currency exchange. The Royal Bank of Scotland has a New York office even if they don’t have a US bank routing number on checks sent from the UK. We won’t count the loss of dollars given the errant first checks that were sent since that wasn’t a fault of the banking system.
Fifth, BofA has centralized its “preferred” customer service at an office in Nevada. For the past 15 years or more, I’ve had a banker in Chesterfield where I was one of her accounts and could call her with questions and to straighten out problems. No more. People like my previous contact are now only dealing with financial services clients. Now I have an 888 number to call and unknown people to talk with. And I got this information not in a return phone call from my ex-personal banker, but from someone in the centralized services. So, movement from personal to impersonal via an impersonal message bearer. We had visited over the years. I saw pictures of her children as they were born, were growing up. She knows my children. And she didn’t call.
So I dialed the 888 number. After a nice conversation with a service representative who looked at my account and the transactions, she told me she could see the charge from BofA, but had no idea what it was for. She then transferred me to another department that deals with foreign transactions. The man I talked to there had the personality of a cardboard box, and that might be insulting the box. He told me the story of a man who had been depositing checks from a foreign bank for 15 years and then incurred a charge. Seemed as if the man had overdrafted his account one time and, therefore, the bank assessed fees on his next transaction. I explained I had never had an overdraft on my account (which is true). “Only an example,” I was told. How does that apply to me? What about my transaction? Seems that even though I have never been charged in all the years I’ve been getting these royalty checks, it was “always” the rule to put in a fee and he wondered why I’d never gotten one in the past. Hadn’t I been told of the $40 fee when I submitted my check to my local branch? No, and I was dealing with the same cashier who had helped me last year when I deposited a similar check. Well, he said he has no authority to waive the charge unless it was his department’s fault. I was told to call my local branch and talk to the manager there.
So I dialed the 888 number. After a nice conversation with a service representative who looked at my account and the transactions, she told me she could see the charge from BofA, but had no idea what it was for. She then transferred me to another department that deals with foreign transactions. The man I talked to there had the personality of a cardboard box, and that might be insulting the box. He told me the story of a man who had been depositing checks from a foreign bank for 15 years and then incurred a charge. Seemed as if the man had overdrafted his account one time and, therefore, the bank assessed fees on his next transaction. I explained I had never had an overdraft on my account (which is true). “Only an example,” I was told. How does that apply to me? What about my transaction? Seems that even though I have never been charged in all the years I’ve been getting these royalty checks, it was “always” the rule to put in a fee and he wondered why I’d never gotten one in the past. Hadn’t I been told of the $40 fee when I submitted my check to my local branch? No, and I was dealing with the same cashier who had helped me last year when I deposited a similar check. Well, he said he has no authority to waive the charge unless it was his department’s fault. I was told to call my local branch and talk to the manager there.
Dutifully, I called the branch, talked to the cashier who had handled the transaction, who talked to her manager, who authorized a refund of the $40. It’s taken several days and perseverance, but at least I got some of the money back.
Oh. I have switched how I get my royalties. They are to be wire transferred. I have been told the BofA fee will be $15. We shall see.
posted by Bud Hirsch at 3:28 PM
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