Coffee and Hell's Bankers

Today’s rant concerns the antics of Branch, Banking and Trust (BB&T). When we first arrived in the land of opportunity one of the first things that we had to do was open a bank account. Purely by an act of good fortune we stumbled across First Virginia Bank. These were wonderful people. Apart from offering first class service with a smile we got to know them all by their first names and they treated the Boss and I like old friends. Well they say that all good things come to an end and thus it came to pass that First Virginia was bought out by BB&T. Within months the Manager left, followed by the assistant Manager and then most of the staff. Now as an immigrant myself I don’t have a racist chromosome in my body but if you are employing people to deal with the public then it is my guess that they should have a reasonable command of the language. BB&T didn’t get the point and it soon became impossible to speak to anyone on the telephone. (Yes I accept it may have been my fault for having an English accent). Then strange charges started to appear. My favorite was a $10 deduction every month. This apparently was our fault, as we had not given First Virginia our social security numbers when we opened the account. Now BB&T were being fined by some regulatory authority and rather than tell us, they just tacked the charges onto our account. It goes without saying that, despite giving BB&T everything that they asked for, this charge came and went over the next year. By the way if you have ever tried to open a bank account without a social security number you will know what a cartload of BS this was. About this time we were making up our own words for the initials BB&T, my favorite being Ball Busters and Thieves.

When we moved to Kissbotty County we decided that we should change banks and say goodbye to BB&T forever. I wrote out a check on the old BB&T account that left just $3 in the account so that if they gave me a hard time about closing it I could just walk away. Well I did not count on the avarice of the scumbags from Charlotte. Before I could close the account they hit me with a $10 handling fee (they had never pulled this stunt before). Now the account is $7 overdrawn so the hit me with an unauthorized overdraft fee of $35. They then write to me to let me know and charge $35 for the letter. Then some other BS and before I can blink I am being threatened over a “debt” of $99. Apparently if I do not submit to their extortion I will be reported to some credit agency and my life will be over. Well I say bring it on BB&T. I shall be instructing Bertie Grabbit (Sue, Grabbit and Runne LLP) to issue writ (or whatever you colonials do) for mental anguish, tortuous interference with business, habeas corpus, Flagrante delicto and whatever Bertie can pull out of his hat. Of course this suit will be on the back burner until Bertie has successfully brought to fruition my paternity claim in the case of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby.

In the meantime might I suggest that any of you unfortunate to “bank” with BB&T that you seek alternative bankers? I heartily endorse the great folks at Coffee House Banking in Smallville in fact I left a small deposit there just last night.

TCB
PS FOTL1 tells me that she had a similar experience. She had a redundant BB&T account with $11.29. BB&T decided to clean her out and call it a closing fee. Scumbags!