12,300 reasons to leave ... and I'm NOT sorry!

Here’s a question: have you ever paid someone for something that you shouldn’t have paid them for? As a father of two young (and very entrepreneurial) daughters, my hand goes way up because I’ve paid them both a few bucks to paint my toenails, to let me sleep a few more minutes  and to scare my sleeping wife with a small black plastic spider. Oh, and to make my “bed” on the couch each morning that very same week. That, too.

If you’ve ever bought a coffee at Starbuck’s, purchased a Spin Doctors CD or - more recently - paid for a gallon of gas, you have indeed overpaid for something and should be reasonably able to relate to what I’m talking about. There’s hardly any shame in overpaying for something; in fact, people all over the world do it every day. $4.29 for a gallon of 1%? $60 for a pair of flip-flops? $869 to replace a caliper? (again my hand goes up, thanks to Herb Chambers, but I’m saving that story for a future blog) … happens all the time. You get the idea.

I have another question for you: have you ever paid someone a lot of money for something that you shouldn’t have paid them for because they didn’t actually do anything that warranted you paying them a lot of money for? If your head just spun completely off your shoulders, I apologize. I’ll be more specific: have you ever been charged $12,310 for something that should have cost you $10? Yes? And did the business that charged you 1,231% more than they should have quickly send you a nice, professionally-written letter apologizing for their error and the panic attack you had upon discovering said error? No? Well, this happened to me recently, and although narc’ing out a major financial institution just to make myself feel better may be wrong, I’m doing it anyway. Serves them right … they still haven’t apologized for what they did. And THAT is wrong.

While driving home from work five weeks ago, I had one of those “Oh no! I forgot to pay and mail all those bills!” moments that I have from time to time. I quickly pulled into the Target parking lot and checked the Citizen’s Bank app on my iPhone to see what my checking account balance was because, you know, I can’t write seven checks if I can only afford to write five. Imagine my horror when I noticed that the numbers representing my account balance were shown in red bold, with parentheses around them and a big fat negative sign before them. How big? Big! Over $10,000 big. Well, once my heart rate went down and visions of some greasy, pimply-faced teenager using my stolen ATM number at Hot Topic subsided, I set the land speed record from Lincoln Plaza to the Stop & Shop on Route 9 in Shrewsbury so that I could find out from someone at Citizen’s Bank there why I now owe them a whole lot of dough that I don’t have.

Once I squealed into the Stop & Shop parking lot - think Paul Walker’s Mitsubishi screaming through the Dodger Stadium parking lot in “The Fast and the Furious” - I double-parked and checked my app again. There it was: Citizen’s Bank charged my account $12,310 for a $10 check I mailed to my mom the week before. Ten dollars. Understand:  the likelihood of mom’s friendly ‘Cape Cod Five’ teller handing her $12,310 in cash is equal to something like Bobby Valentine winning the 2012 American League Manager of the Year award … it’s not happening. And in the off-chance that some dimwitted bank teller did hand mom a large paper bag stuffed with fifties and hundreds in exchange for a scant $10 check, well, a few things could happen: mom would stand there and count it until she realized that it was a lot more than she expected, she’d give it back or she would call me and ask how on earth I could afford to send her a check for so much money. Well, none of these things actually happened because I immediately called mom. She confirmed that all she got out of the deal was two measly fives, as was the plan.

I march up to the Citizen’s Bank counter and explain what happened to a teller. He expresses disbelief and asks to see my app, and says “wow, that’s crazy.” I ask how this could have happened (he doesn’t know) and whether somebody could explain why or how this happened. He says no again, phones up corporate and they also say no. He summons a manager, who also expresses disbelief, laughs it off and assures me that future overdraft charges will be taken care of. Gee thanks, I say, but the issue now becomes this: What would have happened if I didn’t figure this out myself? Would the bank have noticed that they charged my account $12,300 more than they should have? He thinks no. Scary. They promise to fix everything, and as I walk out I find myself a bit surprised and disappointed that nobody apologized … but hey, it’s no big deal. I suppose things could have been a lot worse.

Within a few days everything’s resolved. The $44 overdraft charges appear and disappear. All is normal again.

Last week - about a month after the whole fiasco surfaced - a letter arrives from Citizen’s. Not a nice letter, either. This letter was to inform me that an item was paid, in the amount of $12,310, which overdrew my account and resulted in nonsufficient funds. The letter recommended that I make a deposit to my account ASAP to avoid additional charges, and explained that “accounts remaining in a negative status will be forwarded to their collection department.” There was no signature on the letter; no person listed as the letter’s author. Worse yet, there was no apology. None. So I threw it out.

Those close to me know that I can be somewhat of a gentle soul, but I’m also 100% Italian. Burn me once, shame on me. Burn me twice, shame on YOU. Had this $10 been mistakenly transformed into $100 or $1000, I would have understood completely and chalked it up to someone in some back room somewhere at some Citizen’s Bank tapping an extra zero or two on some computer completely in error. But … $12,300? How does THAT happen?! No answers, and no apologies. Strike one, and strike two. Sorry, Citizen’s, you’re out. But look on the bright side: you didn’t have to put up with nearly the amount of crap that Bobby V did - and he still has his job!

So, the lessons learned here are (a) check your bank statements and (b) don’t pay someone a lot of money for something that you shouldn’t have paid them a lot of money for. In fact, the next time I’m overcharged for something, I’m going home and taking out that little black plastic spider again. Although the risk involved is enormous (actually, the couch isn’t THAT uncomfortable), the reward will be great.

Besides, the kids make a couple of bucks. And you can never pay too much for laughs.