Re: 12/6/01 - [USB] U.S. Bank Gave Me a Five Star Screwing
U.S. Bank Gave Me a Five Star Screwing
[My experiences with U.S. Bank (US Bancorp), now part of Firstar Bank]
The following information is a summary of my first-hand experiences with US Bank (now part of Firstar Bank), and my personal opinions based upon those experiences. Every effort has been made to assure the factual accuracy of the information presented.
INTRODUCTION
October 1998: I had been a customer of US Bank for over 12 years. I had a personal savings account, a personal checking account, our business checking account, and a credit line account with US Bank. They weren't the greatest bank I ever dealt with, but they weren't the worst either. The biggest draw was the number of branches: I could conveniently do my banking no matter where I was on a given day.
October 1998: Jack Grundhofer and his First Bank Systems (FBS) had just taken over the old and noble institution known as US National Bank of Oregon a few months earlier. Little did I know how Jack Grundhofer's business model at the time, based on the concept of 'minimal customer service for maximum profit', was going to affect me. Little could I foresee the nightmare I was about to be sucked into.
THE NIGHTMARE BEGINS
Early October 1998. Estimated Tax payments were due. I went to a local US Bank branch and using an ATM, transferred funds from my personal savings account to my personal checking account. Then I wrote a personal check and deposited funds into our business account. Later that day, I cut a bundle of checks: ES tax payments; monthly personal bills; monthly business bills.
Ten(10) days later, I received a notice in the mail from US Bank. It indicated that the first check that I had written ten days earlier had "bounced" (NSF: non-sufficient funds) and was being returned to me. Say what?
I immediately called US Bank customer service to find out what was going on. They confirmed that my personal checking account did not have sufficient funds to cover this check. But I transferred way more than enough to cover that check ten days ago I told them. "We don't have any record of a transfer" they replied. "Would you like to complete the transfer now?"
So, I re-did the funds transfer, with the customer service representative. But what about all the checks that are outstanding? I asked; If you're saying that the transfer was never processed, then a lot of those checks will probably be coming back NSF. "There's nothing we can do about that. You'll just have to straighten things out at the end of the month".
But wait a minute, I said. I completed the funds transfer ten days ago. You (US Bank) messed up and didn't process the transaction. That's not my fault. Why should I have to deal with returned checks, and probably penalty fees, because of your mistake? "There's nothing we can do about that sir" they again said. Sure there is: You could flag the account to make sure that outstanding checks go through, and that no penalty fees are assessed. "No, there's no way we can do something like that sir; you'll just have to wait to the end of the month to get your accounts straightened out" they again said.
So, I went down to the branch where the problem had occurred. Waited almost an hour to see the branch manager, and was told, "there's nothing that can be done at the branch level any more; you'll have to deal with our customer service department by phone". One more call to customer service, and again the same refrain: "There's nothing we can do about that sir".
And sure enough, the notices for "bounced" checks started rolling in, sometimes two or three a day, and all with statements indicating that penalty fees of $ 18 - $ 35 had been removed from my accounts. This went on for the remainder of the month. Finally, in early November, I was able to determine what was left in the accounts and rescue the remaining funds. I closed all of our US Bank accounts and went to another bank. But US Bank had extracted quite a bit of money from my accounts, as a result of their original error, and I wasn't happy.
I submitted my complaint and demand for restitution (multiple offices: by FAX, mail, and certified mail). Now, in all fairness to the bank, I will admit that some of the fees were reversed and the mis-appropriated funds returned to me [an implicit admission of their error?]. But not all of the monies were returned, and on principal, I did not plan on letting them keep what they didn't have a right to have taken in the first place.
When I "demanded" the balance of the fees inappropriately removed from my accounts, I received a terse, unsigned letter stating that I had been merely inconvenienced by the incident, and that the matter had been fully resolved. Resolved my heinie: They still owed me a small but significant chunk of money.
After a final attempt to get the improperly taken fees returned, I filed a small claims action against US Bank (December 1998). And since they had already taken the equivalent of 1-1/2 to 2 months of credit line account payments from me, I told them there would be no further payments made on that account until this issue was in fact resolved.
The case went to trial in February 1999, and I won hands-down. They presented no defense, not even an explanation. The judge awarded me the balance of the fees, and a small amount of "punitive damages", and thoroughly chastised the bank's representative. Terms like unacceptable conduct and unprofessional behavior were handed down from the bench.
Now this should have been the end of the story. I got my money back. I got a token amount of "punitive damages". I told the US Bank representative, outside the courtroom, that it was my intention to pay off the full balance of my credit line account just as soon as the bank satisfied the court judgement. BUT, I said, I am going to check my credit reports and there better not have been any adverse information posted by US Bank, or I guarantee there will be additional legal action taken against the bank. "Oh no: Given the circumstances and pending legal action, the bank should not have posted any negative information about your credit line account" was the reply. "I'll check into it when I get back to the office and make sure everything is ok."
To this day I don't know (and don't really care) why my October 1998 ATM transfer of funds didn't go through. I have heard from others who report that in the same time period they experienced similar problems, with both ATM and telephone transactions.
US Bank employees (most of whom are now ex-employees) have told me that in late 1998, the "integration" of the US Bank and First Bank systems was not going well. Reportedly, in the period between October 1998 and March 1999, there were "many problems", and US Bank was "tracking losses in case it decided to pursue legal action against the [system] vendor".
"Tracking losses"? If they knew they were having problems, why weren't customers advised to be a little more vigilant? That might have prevented both a whole lot of problems and the loss of a lot of customers.
TRIVIA
A piece of collateral information that illustrates (I think) the level of competency of this company. I closed all of my accounts with US Bank in the first week of November 1998. For more than six (6) months thereafter, each and every month I got a statement for our business checking account indicating that the monthly service fee ($ 13) had been withdrawn from the account. Furthermore, two or three times each month, I received a notice indicating that the account balance was "under limit", and that a penalty fee had been assessed against the account. By mid-1999, the "balance" on this long-closed account was hundreds of dollars in negative territory. If it wasn't so sad, it would almost be comical.
So US Bank, what part of "the account is closed" can't you understand?
AN ASIDE
US Bank sent a settlement check to me in late March 1999. Just before I was about to take it to my new bank for deposit, I got a call from US Bank. "Don't tender that check! It's no good; we'll be sending you another".
[And I always thought it was illegal to intentionally give someone a "bad" check, or intentionally stop payment on a check issued to cover a legitimate payment.]
Well, another check did arrive, in the first few days of April 1999. And as promised, I ordered up copies of my credit report from the three primary credit reporting organizations. And------ SURPRISE! US Bank had apparently gone out of its way to get even with me.
There it was on the credit reports: US Bank had started reporting derogatory information about my credit line account just days after they had been served with the court summons. And more outrageously, even before they had satisfied the judgement against them, they had reported my credit line account in late February 1999 as "charged off as bad debt".
Here I had given them a "no cost-no embarrassment" way to put this whole incident behind us, and they turn around and go out of their way to add insult to injury. Talk about being mean-spirited and vindictive! Talk about trying to get even!
I voiced my objections, and gave US Bank the opportunity to negotiate a settlement. I got no response. However, in June 1999, the bank attempted to sell my credit line account to a collection agency [when I explained the situation to them, they promptly gave the account back to the bank]. After this assault, I appealed directly to Jack Grundhofer: It was time to stop this nonsense and get the matter resolved. The response was, "we don't understand your complaint: We acted within our rights".
So, becoming tired of dealing with this stone wall, and having statute of limitations deadlines looming, I turned the matter over to an attorney. My expectation was that US Bank would see that I was serious, and finally come to the table in good faith and discuss a way to put this behind us. After all, the amount of money (credit damages) involved was minor: All I really wanted was for them to remove the derogatory information that they had filed with credit reporting organizations.
INSULT TO INJURY
THE ESCALATION
A really bizarre twist to the story became apparent in June 2001. Within 24 hours of a copy of my original credit line application being sent us by US Bank, as part of the discovery process, someone created a Yahoo! profile in my name, and then later posted messages using this "stolen identification" on the Yahoo! message board for US Bank (USB).
Why would someone create a profile using my name, and then post messages to the US Bank message board? In my opinion, someone was trying to let me know that people in, or associated with, US Bank were watching the message board. A not too subtle form of intimidation, with the goal of keeping me from posting my story to the message board, I suppose.
But the story has an even darker side. In creating the stolen identification profile, the perpetrator used an address that I haven't lived at for ten years. In fact, I only lived at that address for a very short period of time. So why would someone use such out-dated information? Where would they even have found that address?
Well, by coincidence, I opened my credit line account with US Bank while I was at that old address. And the application form that US Bank conveniently provided to us just before the Yahoo! profile was created clearly shows that now invalid address. The circumstantial evidence would suggest that someone with access to my credit line account records used the information on the account application form to create the "stolen identification" profile. I can't see that there could be any other explanation.
Apparently whoever went to the trouble of creating this bogus Yahoo! profile figured out that they had probably crossed the line: The profile was quickly deleted. Obviously this person was not Internet-savvy. If they knew what they were doing, they would know that deleting the profile only removed it from public view. All the data still exists on Yahoo's server: Their Internet Protocol (IP) address, and dialup/network routing information. Enough information for someone to trace back right to the PC that was used to create the bogus profile.
Yahoo! was immediately notified of the incident, and has responded by trapping and preserving the offending data.
A variety of state and federal regulatory/enforcement agencies were also notified. The Minnesota Attorney General's Office has indicated that they believe the action constitutes a theft of identity (potentially a felony). I am awaiting the last of the other agencies to weigh in, before making a decision as to how to proceed. I suspect though that someone is going to be going down in flames. Mis-use of information contained in presumably confidential bank records is not something that is going to be taken lightly.
A BIZARRE TWIST
Lately US Bank (now part of Firstar Bank) has made a big deal over its "Five Star Guarantee", and a claim that it is now a "new", customer-service oriented bank.
A "new" US Bank? First of all, isn't that an acknowledgment that the old US Bank (USB/FBS) was not customer-service oriented? Secondly, how can it be a "new" bank? Jack Grundhofer, who was at the helm when and whose policies caused all my problems, is now the chairman of the "new" US Bank. He sold his US Bank to his little brother's (Jerry Grundhofer) Firstar Bank. And Firstar apparently doesn't exactly have a stellar reputation when it comes to customer service (see "consumer opinions").
The same old people are running the same old US Bank: In my opinion, there's nothing "new" about it.
The Five Star Guarantee? Well, supposedly if you catch them in a mistake, or receive lousy service, they are supposed to pay you either five dollars or your actual costs. Good luck collecting anything more than a Lincoln (and you might have to fight for that)! No, I suspect that this "guarantee" might just be a slick marketing ploy. Hey, I wonder under what clause of the Five Star Guarantee my situation falls? They must owe me a bundle!
Five Star Guarantee? All I've received from US Bank in the last three years is a FIVE STAR SCREWING!
And the screwing continues, even under the 'new, kinder and gentler' US Bank.
BEWARE, BEWARE!
I'm not going to tell anyone what they should do. You can decide for yourself. But remember this:
In 1998, I would never have believed that US Bank could or would do what they have in fact done to me over the past three years. In my opinion, it's a travesty: A wanton disregard for, and disrespect of, one of their customers. If you are currently a US Bank/Firstar customer, you maybe shouldn't be thinking about IF they'll give you the five star screw, but WHEN.
And if you are not currently a customer, but are considering becoming one, make your decision very carefully.
I'm very happy now at a relatively small, local bank. I found that this local bank can offer me every service I need, at rates comparable to those of US Bank. Yes, I gave up the convenience of having so many branches available, but it was a small price to pay in exchange for real customer service, and genuine respect for me as a customer.
CONSUMER OPINIONS
Everyone should check out what other consumers are saying about US Bank. I have provided links to epinions.com, a consumer opinion and rating site. [Note: To see ALL of the reviews (including the more revealing ones) you need to sign in as a member]
US Bank: 44% customer approval rating -
epinions.com
And remember, US Bank is now part of Firstar Bank:
Firstar Bank: 17% customer approval rating -
epinions.com
Read the reviews, then make informed decisions.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank all of my friends who have provided moral and financial support during this ordeal, and who have taken the time to review and edit the content of this site
- Thanks Guys!
BREAKING NEWS: 25 NOV 2001
I've updated this site to include some breaking news. Click on the link below to see a front page, Cincinnati Enquirer story from November 24, 2001. I think it helps illustrate the attitude that this bank has concerning individual consumers (Remember: US Bank is now part of Firstar Bank). 'The Five Star Screw Strikes Again!'
enquirer.com
CONTACT US
I would like your feedback.
Use the feedback form below to make comments, ask for more information (media and regulatory/enforcement agencies), or to tell your own US Bank story.
Thanks for listening!
usbank-5starscrewed.0catch.com
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Re: 5 Star Screwed...
by: tired_of_fighting_with_usb 12/05/01 10:26 pm
Msg: 12739 of 12748
I did post this story to this mess. board earlier this year. The story is valid. I can assure you that every fact; every detail is decribed accurately.
I agree with you that the story doesn't make much sense. There was an error or systems failure to begin with. That has never been disputed. All USB had to do was prevent further impact to us or at least provide timely restitution. They forced the matter into the courts and we won. Then they added insult to injury.
Why: I suspect that at first it was a matter of retailiation against me for having the chops to take them on. Apparently they don't like being told they are wrong, or being forced to do anything. Everyone expecte that this matter would be resolved early. But USB refused to even consider coming to the table. So things spiraled out of control. Now I think it is a matter of using us as an example, to scare off anyone else who might be considering taking them on.
The Web site was posted because people have a right to know what is going on; how this company and some top people in it operate. I would not have believed that USB, or any bank for that matter would have conducted themselves in this manner. I doubt think I would have believed that any legitimate company that respects it's customers and is truly committed to customer service would engage in this kind of behavior.
They have played a skunky game with me, and they thought they beat us. But there is more than one way to skin a skunk.
For the record, links to the Web site have spread all over the world wide web and are now spreading through usenet (the large original side of the internet). The site is getting about 1000 unique hits each day (3500 page views) and the number of hits has been increasing about 15%-20% each day.
From the replies and inquiries recived, it is clear that the link is being spread around the internet, including independently sent to news media outlets and regulatory and enforcement agencies.
Yes USB is apparently, as you say, "stupid enopugh to what they are accused of on this web site". I made sure of the contents' accuracy so that there could be no defamation/libel retaliation. There has been no `official` objection from USB. I think you can be sure they would be all over me by now if anything presented were inaccurate.
As far as discussing the details of the pending lawsuit, that would not be appropriate. The court/jury will ultimately decide who was wrong and how much the damages now amount to.
No axe to grind; just been trying to resolve this thing for three years and meeting resistance from USB at each step. USB, and USB alone, is responsible in my opinion for letting this matter continue on and for the costs to escalate.
Posted as a reply to: Msg 12733 by skins222000
messages.yahoo.com
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Re: 5 Star Screwed...
by: Yawzzza
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Sell 12/06/01 08:36 am
Msg: 12741 of 12748
Skins, I agree with your assessment. Don't give this dude much attention. I did some research and found out that this guy is in fact a plaintiff against USB. The suit was filed in US District Court, Oregon District by Plaintiff, Fredrick W. Scalise of Eugene, Oregon. Case # 00-6399-TC. What Scalise's web site doesn't tell you is that Judge Thomas Coffin, on 11/20/01, signed an Order granting USB's motion for partial Summary Judgement, thus dismissing Scalise's claims against the USB for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Fair Credit Billing and defamation of credit. I read the Judge's opinion and it is a fair opinion. Scalise apparently got pissed at USB for five NSF charges (Bank error) which Scalise took upon himself to charge back the bank three times the amount in his own "unilateral penalty assessment" against the bank. He stopped paying his monthly commercial credit line payments claiming "right of offset" for his unpaid penalty fees billed to the bank. The Bank rightly reported the credit line as delinquent to the credit bureaus.
IMHO, this guy has only one oar in the water.
However, I still think USB SUCKS under current management.
Posted as a reply to: Msg 12733 by skins222000
messages.yahoo.com |
