On Sun, 30 Jul 1995, Lucky Green wrote:
Six years ago, you could walk into a Bank, show them your driver license, and open an account. Today, you need several pieces of ID. Three years ago, you could withdraw money from your own account without having your checkbook on you. Today, they make you pay for a "counter check". One year ago, you could walk into a bank an cash a check drawn onto an account at the very same bank. Today (Coast Federal), they make you pay a $10 check cashing fee.
When I lived in California, I banked at Security Pacific, then changed over my account to BofA. When I left the bay area, I closed my account, not knowing that someone had sat on a check for $120 - I thought it was me just entering an ATM receipt twice (as I do from time to time). So, someone from a place called ChexSystems sends me a letter, saying "well, you had a check go through and the bank paid it, please pay us." So, I send them the $120 or whatever it was. When I tried to open a checking acount in Utah, I find that I can't, for the sole reason that I had been "reported to ChexSystems". I explained the situation to no avail. BofA refuses to remove the charge, saying that it's "against their policy". ChexSystems refuses to do anything about it, saying that "it was a valid debt", one which I neither knew about nor agreed to. If the bank would've mailed me a letter, saying that they bounced the check, or paid it and please remit, I would've been happy to. Instead, they chose to try and screw me over by reporting the so-called "debt" to some sort of check reporting system. From my point of view, the action by the bank was malicious and done with the intent of causing me harm. I don't recommend anyone doing business with BofA for this reason, and I strongly urge that people immediately close their accounts with BofA, refuse to do business with them, and switch to another bank which refuses to participate in such malicious practices. I'm *not* impressed. -- Ed Carp, N7EKG Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com 801/534-8857 voicemail 801/460-1883 digital pager Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key an88744@anon.penet.fi Q. What's the trouble with writing an MS-DOS program to emulate Clinton? A. Figuring out what to do with the other 639K of memory.