Bye-bye customers. You're fired.

[bankworking]

I work for a small bank. We're popular locally because we have a small minimum balance requirement and no monthly fees (what is up with banks charging for a person just to have a checking account? if we can afford not to, they certainly can).

Anyway, we also get a lot of small business accounts. We don't have a ton of higher level business services. Basically we can do the same for business accounts as we can for personal accounts, only in the name of the business. When all you need is a basic account that has that same low minimum balance requirement and no monthly fee, we are again popular.

And so we get Gas Station Guy.

Gas Station Guy owns his own station. I don't know if he doesn't take credit cards, or maybe just encourages cash... or maybe he just gets a lot of cash transactions. What I do know is that every other day he comes in with a ton of cash to deposit, lots of it in small bills. This takes a LOT of work to process. Two tellers have to pull aside to the counting machine (which is temperamental about bills being flat). It takes time to count the bills in front of the customer. Always have to do a second count for accuracy. Then, the bills have to be bundled and sold to the vault, which requires the vault to be balanced.

It was not uncommon for this to take nearly an hour of work. Every other night. For one guy.

...who would immediately then withdraw the cash in the form of a cashier's check so he could deposit it into his other bank.

Yes, we were putting in this ton of work, making the teller line longer for other customers, only to have Gas Station Guy take the money over to the bank he actually used for his business. The bank that would have charged him to handle that much cash on a regular basis. He did NO business with us besides keep that low minimum balance in his account and deposit his cash.

We don't handle enough business accounts to set up a system to charge for deposits. Corporate, however, saw this (and apparently 2 other account who did the exact same thing at other branches), and decided that maybe it was time to start... only not really. They found out that our security group that handles the ATMs would be willing to handle these deposits... for an outrageous fee since there wouldn't be enough customers to take advantage of the system since we don't generally handle more involved business accounts (so no bulk discounts). Corporate presented this solution as an alternative and very politely told these three business accounts to take this option or take their deposits elsewhere.

All three businesses closed their accounts, which was the goal all along.

[sirwired]

Thank goodness. What an a$$-holish move... to tie up all those resources and do your "real" business elsewhere. I guess it's a business-owner version of somebody that buys what they need from a local store, orders the same item from Amazon, and then returns that one (or the used one if they are really evil) to the store when the mail-order items arrives.

I expect all that cash in small bills comes from lottery sales, which around here anyway, must be done via cash or PIN-debit.

[earl colby pottinger]

Is he using you as a free money counting service, or could this be a way to hide some of his cash flow?

It also sounds like Corporate is doing it's proper job in your organization.

[Argabarga]

And, how much do you want to bet that immediately after closing their accounts, all three of them proceeded to their bar/social media of choice and ranted at length about how the big banks (tm) are once again, out to screw over the little guy by charging them for things that they used to/should do FOR FREE as it costs them NOTHING!!!!!

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

And, how much do you want to bet that immediately after closing their accounts, all three of them proceeded to their bar/social media of choice and ranted at length about how the big banks (tm) are once again, out to screw over the little guy by charging them for things that they used to/should do FOR FREE as it costs them NOTHING!!!!!

And all their friends and relatives posted their "likes" for the complaints on Facebook, the corporate office saw them, and tore the local bank people new assholes for making no effort to retain this valuable customer.

[pzychobitch]

And all their friends and relatives posted their "likes" for the complaints on Facebook, the corporate office saw them, and tore the local bank people new assholes for making no effort to retain this valuable customer.

I would not be surprised one bit.

[EricKei]

(what is up with banks charging for a person just to have a checking account? if we can afford not to, they certainly can).

It's simple. Because they can Smaller places don't do it because it brings in customers, and they need a certain amount of them to stay afloat. Larger ones charge because there's always another sucker who won't care/protest.

[Arcus]

The company I work for does something like this. They just wait a week before they pull the money we deposit. I hate it. I was taking $5,000-$6,000 in ones and $1,000-$1,500 in quarters to them every week. I went out of my way to have all quarters rolled and the bills bundled in a way that their counter liked so it wouldn't take as long (one teller for less than 20 minutes.) There was some good in how much I was depositing. I found out that with what I had and what a car wash was bringing in, they were able to cover all the quarter and $1 bill change orders from other businesses in the area.

[gremcint]

...who would immediately then withdraw the cash in the form of a cashier's check so he could deposit it into his other bank.

And that is where he earned his place in the special hell.

[bankworking]

Is he using you as a free money counting service, or could this be a way to hide some of his cash flow?

It also sounds like Corporate is doing it's proper job in your organization.

The free money counting service, I'm thinking. Our fraud lady in corporate is awesome and can practically smell someone structuring, and cash transactions like he put in would trigger a review by her in no time.

Of course I don't know if he reported all his income, tax-wise, but you don't need to use multiple account to not report all your income. Anyway his business taxpayer ID on the account would be reported by us, so the IRS would likely be asking for our statements also if he was ever audited. Not being a tax expert, don't really know how that works.

Yeah, our corporate does it's job most of the time, but this was the first time I've run across an account being fired without there being fraud or abusive customer actions involved. I'm glad they picked him to get rid of. He was never abusive, but he wasn't particularly nice either and tended to give off one of those "you-are-inconveniencing-me-by-breathing" vibes.

[mathnerd]

I'm glad corporate has y'all's backs. To give credit where it's due, MajorBank was also pretty good at getting rid of abusive customers. While I know the big banks catch a lot of flack (and not without good reason in most cases), at least one is a darned good company to work for. Every time it came down to an employee or customer, in my experience anyway, the bank sided with us. I had some personal troubles and they really went above and beyond what any employer could reasonably be expected to do for such a low-ranking employee. Not all corporations are bad guys.