Full disclosure and the banking industry

Full disclosure and the banking industry

Posted Mar 5, 2003 18:58 UTC (Wed) by sethml (subscriber, #8471)
In reply to: Full disclosure and the banking industry by arcticwolf
Parent article: Full disclosure and the banking industry

In '96 I had an account at a semi-local bank in Santa Barbara CA (I don't remember the name of the bank, but I think they had half a dozen branches total). One day when withdrawing money with my ATM card I noticed that the balance seemed low, and decided to check my records when I got home. When I got back to my office, a person from the bank called, explaining the situation. Apparently the bank had a policy that account numbers couldn't be reused for at least 5 years, but when my account was created they accidently violated that rule and gave me the account number of somebody who had died (and had his account closed) recently. A while later his daughter found his checkbook, went to her local branch (different from mine), and asked to have herself added to the account. They happily added her to my account, even though they presumably noticed that my name and address weren't even remotely similar to the ones on his checks. She promptly started spending money from the account, so that it went from ~$1500 to a few hundred over a few days.

Anyhow, the bank had just figured out their mistake (before I did). They created a new account for me and deposited my former balance into it, and took the hit for the mistake themselves. I was impressed with their incompetence, but also impressed with their customer service. I received two statements for that month; the one for the old account included a few dozen slips that said "we have lost this check in processing" - one for each of the checks the woman had written.

Fast-forward to a year later. Six months before I'd closed the new account. Out of the blue I got an envelope with the last statement from my old account, and the dozens of checks that the woman had written on my account - including her address, phone number, and signature. Then I got a notice that my account (the old one!) was $500 overdrawn and would I please pay up. I called their rep and explained the whole situation, and he couldn't find any reference to it! But I eventually convinced him, and I never heard from them again.

The moral: banks are astonishingly incompetent. And by and large the individuals working at banks are nice people and want to help you, and often don't let litte things like other people's privacy and accounts get in the way.

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