I ended up in a position where I needed to cash payroll checks. No biggie right? Go to the bank who issued the check and cash it.

This time they asked me to pay a fee for this. The resulting discussion was not pretty.

Teller: I have to charge you a fee for this. All the banks are doing it now and everyone has to pay the fee.

Me: My bank does not do this, do you really charge everyone all the time?

Teller: No, we have a list of account holders that we do not charge a fee for their checks.

Me: Isn't that a lie and discrimination? You really don't charge everyone, and this implies you do not have to charge everyone. So you choose who to charge and who not to charge, based on what? How upset the business account holder will be about it?

Teller: I'm sorry, let me get the manager.

Manager: Sir, is there a problem?

Me: Yes, I'm being asked to pay a fee to cash a payroll check that should be honored at face value. You are the bank issuing the check right? Didn't the account holder pay for this service? Why should I pay again, seems to me this is a double dip --theft.

Manager: Sir, cashing a check has a cost associated with it, and we are charging everyone.

Me: That's a lie Ma'am. Your representative here clearly stated you have lists of accounts you do not charge a fee for. I can name several from that list. Is this true or not?

Manager: That's true yes.

Me: So, that's a lie then. And on what basis do you make that decision? Am I being discriminated against, given I must pay the fee and someone else here in line may not be asked to pay the same fee?

(At this point, I decided to pay the fee, as I have other things to do. Normally, I would have refused and pressed the matter.)

[points to sign]

Me: That sign says 5 star service. Well, we've got a lie, theft and discrimination. That's three failed stars out of five. I'll give you two, one for being decent in the conversation and the other for actually completing my transaction.

[she's pissed at this point!]

Manager: Anything else?

Me: Not at this time.

[teller hands me the cash, minus 10 dollars]

Me: Can I have a receipt?

Teller: Huh?

Me: You are a bank right? Are you not required to present me a proper accounting of this transaction in the form of a receipt? How else can I account for the fee in my personal accounting?

Teller: We don't give receipts for this sir.

[goes and gets pissed manager again]

Manager: Sir, I understand you want a receipt?

Me: Yes, you charged me a fee for services rendered in the form of cashing a check drafted on an account held here at your bank. I want a receipt for that service for my own accounting please.

Manager: We don't have a standard receipt for this transaction. I can write one if you like.

Me: Please do.

Manager: What do you want on it?

Me: An accounting of this transaction of course!

[she grabs slip of paper and writes out a brief accounting, includes fee]

Me: Can I have a teller stamp please?

Manager: Ok.

[*blam* big ass angry stamp]

Manager: Anything else?

Me: Nope, I've had enough of your service today. You have a nice day.

[leaves, shaking head in wonder...]

You troublemaker......LOL

If they do not record the transaction then how in heck does that teller balance their drawer at the end of day? Hmmmmm..let's see..check for $200 in only $190 out....YAAAA $10 for me...heck of a deal!

Lesson:

You're better off going to a bank where you have an account.

I know it seems ridiculous, but it'll save you a ton of hassle.

Herb

Which bank? Does the name rhyme with "Bank of America?"

Andrew

Nope, but it does contain the letters U and S.

Probably Key Bank!

They charge you a service charge for the service charge on the cost of the paper to print the service charge.

Two words, "Credit Union." Some of the larger ones have many convenient locataions and will accept most anyone as a customer.

While even credit unions are starting to charge some of the fees, there are usually ways around them for credit union members. A credit union member can also use other credit union's ATMs nationwide without fees.

Regular banks have become plain and simple scammers on nearly the same level as the quick check cashimg loan shark places that were recently reigned in by new state laws.

Man, US Bank. Ugh. I used to work as a teller for them. What a royally fucked up bank.

Get this, so after I had quit about 3 years prior, I still had an account there. One night I made a deposit through the ATM for $3,800.00. Two days later, I go to take some money out. I notice that I had an EXTRA $3,800.00 dollars in my account balance. Obviously they had double posted my deposit.

FOR THREE WEEKS and HOURS on the phone I had to convince them that they made a mistake. I knew the lingo of " collected funds " and stuff and every single person I talked to swore up and down that they didnt make a mistake and that the money was mine.

Fine.

I documented every single conversation, including the one at the teller window in which I told her exactly why I am taking the money out and closing my account.

And what do you know? About a MONTH later, I get a letter requesting my presence at a meeting between the FBI, me and some US Bank representatives.

I go to the meeting. They want handwriting samples and are playing all hardball with me to scare me into being worried that I am part of some mail fraud theft ring. I ask if this has anything to do with activity on my account and the 3800 bucks. They said yes. I figured this would be the case and pulled out all my notes for them to read as I finished my handwriting sample sheet.

So they took the notes to another room - came back in and said - OH ok. Well, we'd like the money back now. I told them that I spent it. And WHY I had spent it was because they TOLD me I could.

Whoops.

So they ate it.

I have other such stories that are even MORE infuriating too. But US Bank, yeah. By FAR the worst bank out there. Hands down. Everyone knows it too. Even the employees know it.

Key Bank actually wanted to charge me for walking in and depositing a check into my account. I let the balance drop to about $2.00 and forgot about it. Went back a couple of months later to close the account and they actually wanted to charge me $5.00 to close it. I just looked at the clerk and took out my account card and ripped it in two. Then I said I would just prefer that they keep mailing me statements every month telling me of my $2.00 balance and that they could either forgoe the closing fee and keep the $2.00 or keep it open and print and mail me statement every month cause i'm not paying you $5.00 to close the account!!!! They would not do it so as it was a checking account with no min balance I withdrew $1.98 and told them I just want to leave them with my two cents and never went back!

Randy- You beat me to the punch. Credit Union all the way.

Once I had an account at 5 star us bank for 25 years. They made me wait 25 min to get into the safe deposit box cuz the cust rep person wasbusy signing up a new customer. (Tellers weren't allowed out of the hold up box) I gave the rep a lecture for making the long time cust STAND at the sign in table 25minutes. My safe deposit box is now at washington mutual

I rather buy a used car from the crookedest (?) lot on south 82nd than deal with 5 star us bank.

After some consideration today, I've decided I'm gonna persue this. Thanks for your comments.

I'm not sure this is an ethical nor legal practice. The ethical issue is clear in that the fee is a double dip. Until recently, checks were honored at face value. This is no longer true.

Secondly, this policy will affect a great many lower income people. Fees have risen across the board and there are a lot of them today. These, combined with taxes and inflation really are having an impact on the actual use value of wages earned. This is a fee we really don't need. It has always been possible to cash checks in various places and pay a fee for that service. No biggie.

However, a bank needs to honor it's account holders notes at their face value. The account holder pays for this service and their deposits enable the bank to profit from loans and other transactions. There is no reason for the payee of a note to be charged for that note when presented at the bank where the account resides.

On the legal front, it appears this policy may be in conflict with labor law as well. We have regulation on payment for wages earned that essentially demand the payee be able to receive their compensation in full. There are also regulations that involve not tying compensation to conditions and or specific services.

One's payroll check needs to be presentable somewhere for it's face value, or the employer really is not paying the full amount due. Most people have accounts and can use them. That's not in dispute.

The fee is because it establishes the idea that ones wages are subject to charges and fees. Lots of law on this that contradicts this view. I don't like the expectations being set here.

A bank is different from a check cashing store in that they are the vehicle for value transfer, where a check cashing store really is a third party assuming some risk and not profiting from the service directly. They are entitled to the fee.

Any employer who chooses to run their payroll through one of these banks really could be said to be at risk of violating their labor law in that payees would not receive their compensation in full.

The requirement for an account, IMHO, is not a resonable option for a lot of people. I personally keep an absolute minimum of accounts as they tend to collect fees and have other burdens associated with them.

I'm half tempted to have a friend mail me a check for $5 and go present it for cash. Maybe do $4.80 and see if they would actually ask me to pay them $.20 for the transaction!

I'm sure this is why they maintain lists of business account holders that do not want to get involved with the fees. It could also be that some employers do not support this money grab as well.

The thing that really bothers me is their general unease about providing a receipt. Most all transactions involve an accounting of funds exchanged. The fact that they not only do not provide this accounting, and offered some resistance to having to actually do so, suggests to me there are some issues here to be considered that they are trying to keep a low profile on.

I took a look at fees, and banks today as well. All of the major banks have been very aggressive about fees. They are to the point where profit from interest is almost completely isolated from any cost burden. This bank, in particular, consistantly has the highest fees and structures it's account policies to take full advantage of them.

I have an account a a nice bank. They do none of this crap. (I called and asked.) My situation did not warrant moving the dollars through that account, which is how I got here in the first place.

Herb, I don't consider this a lesson in getting an account. I've not lived a life where I take crap from large companies and I do not plan to start now. It's always easier to go out of ones way to make large companies happy. No thanks. A bank carries with it some responsibility that comes with the profit derived from handling our dollars and trust.

Any bank that will lie, steal and discriminate is not a trustworthy enterprise as far as I am concerned.

IMHO, this is nothing more than a money grab. If the costs were an issue beyond pure profit, I might reconsider that view. However, band profitability is extremely high and the majority of it comes from fees.

Additionally, services levels have been reduced in recent years as well. For all the dollars being paid in fees, one would think there would be enough operating dollars to provide solid service levels instead of the often poor ones we see today.

As an account holder at a bank, I expect to be able to draft a note and have it honored at face value. I'm sure many employers think the same way --and I'm pretty sure the law mandates this.

There appear to be a few class actions suits working their way through the courts. None that I can participate in, but I'll continue to look and may well go ahead and engage in a coupla more transactions to collect some more info.

This is not ok and I'm gonna make some noise.

It would be interesting to cash a payroll check from a large company at the issueing bank and if they attempt to charge a fee demand a receipt so that you can turn it in on an expense report and tell them you intend to make sure the owner knows that the bank doing the payroll is garnishing it's employee's payroll to cash the check's! Then listen to them stutter and stammer and then back out of charging it.

"Herb, I don't consider this a lesson in getting an account."

Look. It's not like we're dealing with like a hospital here...and they're horrible enough.

Banks are purely businesses and they TRULY don't care.

What is your time worth?

Pick your battles, my friend. Banks are notoriously jerkish.

It's all about the money.

Now boycotting them may get you some press and MAYBE a better response. But I wouldn't count on it. Remember that Oregon military officer who was losing his house? I think Washington Mutual was foreclosing on him...even with all the fuss the media made didn't seem to make much difference, but I never did hear how it worked out.

Good luck. I just don't expect much from banks, unless you're so wealthy you don't need them. THEN they want to help you.
Herb

No boycotting. Just collect some solid info, then advocacy when it counts.

I agree with you Herb. I'm not gonna launch a crusade anytime soon. But I won't just deal either. It's a fine balance.

One bit of advocacy, I know is effective right now:

Ask for a receipt anytime you are charged a fee at the bank. Insist on it. This will impact them and won't take long.

Banks are purely businesses and they TRULY don't care.

Man that is so true.

"Ask for a receipt anytime you are charged a fee at the bank. Insist on it. This will impact them..."

How you expect that it will impact a decision maker, I honestly don't know.

The poor schlub who hands you a receipt is horribly underpaid and may feel your pain. But will it do any good up the food chain?

I kind of doubt it. But hey, I'm a Nixon man. I've always been used to fighting the odds. So fight back if you want. Better yet, get some consumer advocate to back you. Like David Horowitz, Tom Martino or Ralph Nader.

Herb

Kind of like most corporate suit's.

--------------------------------------------

Columbia Credit Union is the best ever!

Direct Deposit in.....
I Don't use check's.....
Debit Card for all....

NO FEE's..free online bill pay...e-statements...no fee checking...FRIENDLY people!

I agree with the endorsement of credit unions. Mine is awesome. I've NEVER regretted dumping Bank of America for my CU - they're awesome. All the regular banks are anymore are fee-based institutions.

Speaking of which, airlines suck, too. I'm staying overnight in Phoenix because after being enticed to be bumped from my American Airlines flight through Chicago (for a nice airline credit voucher), I got to Phoenix to find, first of all, that the hour connection time was not nearly enough when you have to change terminals and go through security again. (You cannot walk - it's a bus ride.) Even then, there was no promised reservation with US Air. Of course by then absolutely every flight was overbooked or canceled so I have to wait until Saturday to fly. FYI, I could just as easily be taking the same length of flights from Portland around the same time, instead of being stranded here...

You'd think that American Airlines would acknowledge their mistake, APOLOGIZE, and at LEAST put me up in a hotel for the night. You'd think wrong. All I got were excuses about how it wasn't their fault and how they were treating all their other customers just as poorly, so I shouldn't feel bad about spending good part of my airline credit voucher to get a hotel, blah blah blah.

From now on: Southwest Airlines all the way, Baby. They know how to run an airline and still treat customers well. I don't give a damn about assigned seats.

Andrew

No Way....
When available Alaska/Horizon all the way. Alaska is expanding and now has flights to New York and they are great people!

Hey, I was on an Alaska flight from Portland to Phoenix, and they are pretty good. We had a bumpy ride - certainly not THEIR fault! - and yet the still apologized profusely. Related to the ride or not, they gave every passenger on the plane a $20 gift certificate to McCormick & Schmick's!

Unfortunately, Alaska still doesn't have the reach to the East Coast that I need. Southwest does - they now service Philadelphia quite well, plus their prices to that airport are insane ($185 round-trip from Portland to Philly in February??? Direct, one-stop flights with no change of planes).

I only flew AA this last time because I had some frequent flyer miles to use up. I don't consider that a "free" ticket because most of my miles came from a credit card I had for years. AA's frequent flyer program went downhill long ago which is why I dumped the credit card some time ago...

Andrew

I had this pretty good Eastern Airlines thing going on before CEO Frank Lorenzo tossed all the employees overboard during mid flight. RIP Eastern Airlines. The FAA later denied Lorenzo an opportunity to crash, ahem, own another airline. Idiot.

Beware of PointWest Credit Union..
And if you ever stop in,tell Val "Hi" for me.
I'm sure she'll remember me,after I pounded my fist on her desk for an hour,and nearly strangled her.

I've never been so pissed in my life.

US Bank did it basically to force people to open an account with them. I asked the bank manager at PDX because my employees were none too happy with the new rule, and she told me that more or less it's the bank's way to force them to open an account with US Bank. (She did tell me that she thought it was a bogus rule, but she didn't have any say in the matter).

Put me on the record as another one who LOVES their credit union. My wife keeps trying to get me to switch to a normal bank, and I tell her that there is NO WAY I am leaving my credit union. It's worth the drive to Mall 205 area to me for the extra bennies and good service.

As far as the airlines and such ... Andrew is right, a lot of them ARE ... well, cheap. I prefer Southwest as well, being a wide-body myself I actually fit into their seats, they are nice, no-frills, their safety record is the best in the business, and Andrew - they actually put their passengers in a hotel when they cancel flights! Last week with that big windstorm, Southwest had to cancel all of their flights after about 4pm. They put ALL of their passengers up and got them ALL out on that following Friday, a day when they were already overbooked. They MADE it happen.

No wonder they are the ONE domestic air carrier rolling in money when so many are in bankruptcy.

And why are they in a position where forcing people to open accounts is a viable option?

Probably that 2 outta 5 star service!

Brianl: Right behind the teller was a sign that says, why pay 5 dollars when you can cash your check for free? Ask teller for details!

(boy I could have had great fun with that one, because it's near the other sign that says they will give you 5 dollars when their service is poor!)

Here's a good one, involving TWO credit unions at once!

I have an old acc't at a CU in California, and only keep it "alive" to store auxilliary cash for small things. My main CU is the OnPoint CU's branch in McMinnville.

Last summer, I went to withdraw $100 from the ATM at OnPoint... the machine spit-out $5's instead of $20's because some doofus loaded it wrong, so (instead of $100) I got $25, and the machine thought it was giving $20's and deducted $100 from my acc't. BTW, this same error happened to about 35 or 40 customers

OnPoint refused to make good, even though it was THEIR bank, THEIR machine and THEIR employees at fault... telling me that -since the acc't was based at the CU in Calif- that's who had to straighten it all out.

Long story short: after 6 weeks of bantering back and forth, OnPoint finally fessed-up and gave me my missing $75 back... but it was like pulling teeth.

It was an anomaly, and the bottom line, however, is that CU's are still the best bets out there.

"Brianl: Right behind the teller was a sign that says, why pay 5 dollars when you can cash your check for free? Ask teller for details!"

They had for a few weeks a sign in FRONT of the tellers that explained it, and it more or less said that. "We must now charge $5.00 to cash any US Bank check over $100 for non-US Bank account holders. However, we ARE a full service bank, and we offer ... " and they listed a bunch of stuff.

...wonders if I can get my paycheck in 99 dollar chunks for a one time stunt?

We have been members of Oregon Telco CU, now Unitus CU, for many years. We decided we wanted to make them the lender for our home mortgage. The one back east we initially had for 5 years was sending us legal stuff that they were being investigated for messing with everyone’s escrow.

During the process we had to fork over $400 to have this transaction take place. We sent the money to our old lender. The old mortgage company said they never received it. We contacted our CU and they looked into it. When they got back to us they were shaking their heads at how poorly we had been treated. So our CU sent in $400 of their own money to help us get out of that lender. That really impressed us.

We are now mortgage free and love Unitus CU.

That's who I am through too Chris, and I wouldn't trade them for the world. I even have savings accounts set up for the kids there.

KSKD, that would be a funny stunt! hah

I've been a member of Telco (I refuse to call them the new name Unitus) since I got my own checking account at age 16 (Yikes! 30 years!).

They are the very best. Our entire family uses them for almost everything!

They cover accidental overdrafts with a transfer from your savings for $1.

And they don't charge you for "change jar" sorting/counting and are always nice.

So if anybody here changes to them because of us, we'll have to split the $5 referal bonus 3 ways.

Hah Mrs. M!

Tell ya what, you and Chris can split it. Consider it holiday cheer from me!

Another thing they do (they've done with me, without even asking) is to hold a check instead of paying out for it for a couple of days. I used to get paid on the 8th and 23rd of each month ... well my mortgage payment was due on the 5th. I would send it in, they would get it and put it in the bank before the 8th. Knowing that I would soon have the $$ to cover it, instead of overdrawing my account and even charging that $1, they would simply sit on it for a couple of days until I got my paycheck in the bank, and THEN pay out for it.

Tell me a normal bank that'll do that!

kskd, I'm thinking we've forgotten an obvious solution to the fee thing. perhaps one should take the payroll check back to the employer who issued it and ask for the $5 needed to cash it or else complain to the wage and labor bereau for being short-changed.

Skep - it's not the fault of the EMPLOYER that the bank is doing this. The employer has issued tender for services rendered within the law, with taxes, etc. taken out.

yes, but the employer can threaten to switch to a better bank. In certain professions, employers will do a lot of ass kissing to retain good employees (ie: long haul truckers with clean driving records get their asses kissed the most!). I see no reason why not to put pressure on employers, especially when its a truly crappy bank like US Bank.

I loooooooove Unitus.

There's been a couple system flubs that randomly charged me overdraft fees for no reason....but they fixed it right away!

And they have free coffee.

Its called the "Float, if you did it, it would be called "check kiting", the bank wants you to deposit the check in your bank, where it takes a few days to clear, while both banks get to draw interest on the money.

And a lot of banks wont credit the money to your account, for 2 or 3 days.

Another vote in favor of credit unions: First Technology CU is the best, hands down. They charge me *no* fees - the only fee I've ever been charged was the $1 fee to transfer funds from my credit card to checking if I overdrafted the account... and they ELIMINATED that fee a couple years ago!

And speaking of overdrafting from my credit card- until recently, they (or I) would transfer money from my credit card, allow me to keep it all month, charge me no fee of any kind and *no interest* as long as I paid off the balance by the end of the cycle. I've never heard of a financial institution doing anything like that(as of this month they will start charging interest from the date of the transfer, but still no fees).

They also offer inhouse Insurance brokerage, car-buying service, free online billpay and probably numerous other features I'm not even aware of.

Missing (and Randy too)~

I have been with the School Empolyee's Credit union in Clarke County since about 2000 and overall I can say I have had very good luck with them.

And certainly far better service than Riverview (which I was unfortunately with a couple years ago before going back to CU), which I am not ashamed of bashing because my Dad's cousin is R-View's CEO. (Dead serious.)

However I have been known to have a few far-from stellar experiences with the credit union as well (despite they do generally perform better than banks, even they aren't totally free of flaws.......but then that begs the question of who is) and even at the Van Mall SECU branch (actually I am dating myself somewhat--it's called "IQ Credit Union" now) I have found myself in combat with the teller and/or manager over discrimination, much the same as Missing described.

Now, at the 164th branch I have yet to have any problems with them, and overall my experience with them has been more positive than not.

(Did have sort-of a row with a teller once, who was also a kid who used to pick on me in school and intentionally didn't want to process my transaction properly. People can really be dicks sometimes, you know??)

Bottom line today: Banks want you to make mistakes, overdraw, write bad checks, because the fees they charge for all these things are profit centers. They also have found a way to put a fee on just about every service they offer.

I recently had occasion to put a stop payment on a check. I expected a fee for this, but didn't realize that there was another fee for the bank customer who had deposited the check at his bank. Both banks made money on this transaction!
(Similar, I guess to using a foreign ATM and the ATM's bank and YOUR bank both charge you a fee, sometimes totalling five bucks or more.

Another new irritant: open a new account and most banks will now hold checks deposited for 7 days or more for the first month you have the account.

However, I did have a good bank experience earlier this year. I stupidly made an on-line purchase from what turned out to be a bogus company. My bank returned the amount in total no questions asked. There is a Santa afterall!

Yup, seems banks are little more than a (perfectly legal) scam.

Thank god for Credit Unions--at least I don't feel like little more than a math equation (certainly nothing to be said about Riverview.......and Ronnie, do you read this board??)

TWO things:

Has nobody heard of direct deposit....most employers now offer direct deposit into your checking account with no fee's or visit to the bank required.

Also just cash the check were you are an account holder and also no fee's.

Just don't do business with those that do. Not that difficult. If you thrive on confrontation then take em on and more power to ya! Otherwise just find a good CU and stay the hell away from profit monger banking institutions!