The following is an email I just sent to the Region Manager of Fifth Third after my experience this…read moremorning.
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I wanted to take a minute to explain to you that the way the branch manager at the Andserson location failed to handle a situation just lost your bank a customer. Forgive me if any of this comes across as rude, but I'm not happy right now.
Background: I wrote my wife a check for $3100 and had her go to cash it, so she could get the money in her (Suntrust) account right away. I was making breakfast for the kids. She went to the Anderson location, and they told her they wanted a $25 fee because she's not a 53 account holder. She called me, upset, and explained the situation. I've never heard of such a thing before; charging a fee to cash a valid check to the person to whom it was written.
She put the manager, Andres Rojas, on the phone, and he explained that they wanted $25 to cash the check for her. I told him that I run several hundred thousand dollars a year through my accounts with 53, and if he wanted to lose me as a customer to insist on this $25 fee. I told him to make his decision and hung up, figuring he'd come to the correct (for the bank and the customer) conclusion. I'm accustomed to bank personnel favoring good customer service over pissing a customer off.
Nope. My wife called me back after a few minutes, and told me they were insisting on this $25. So now I had to quit cooking the breakfast, drag the kids into the car, and haul them down to the bank. Where I then withdrew all the money from that account (I have three) and promptly closed it. I have two other accounts, and once all the transactions settle down with them, I will be closing them as well and moving to a different bank.
I do understand that banks have to make their money, and have different ways to do this. I also understand that whatever bank I move to may have a similar (nonsense to me) policy about cashing checks. That's not the point.
The point is the customer service sucks. Your branch manager could have easily given a shit about keeping a fifteen-year customer. But no. He haaaaad to have that $25 fee (which was never going to happen), and now your bank will have neither the $25 or the customer, but instead a disgruntled ex-customer. When I went in to the branch and closed the account the manager was coldly indifferent to the matter. I explained that he just lost a customer, and there was neither an apology nor any effort whatsoever to salvage the situation and retain me as a customer. None. He couldn't possibly have cared less. He wasn't rude in any way - just very matter-of-fact about the whole thing, without a single drop of "Your business matters to me and I would like to see how we can make things right." Cold. Disinterested.
This is a shame too, as I have had excellent customer service before. A few years back the branch manager at Island Estates went out of his way to help me open up my business account. He made it as easy as possible, and I was quite impressed at the time the way he'd handled the whole thing. That had left a very good impression with me and I was very happy.
Today's experience, however, has left a bad taste in my mouth. Now I have to open new accounts, let them mature, connect my paypal account, the whole ordeal. But at this point I am willing to go through that. Before I do I will take some time and find a bank that has a good track record of customer service.
I will also be posting this as a review on yelp, word for word.
