Bob Axtell wrote:

> Then all of a sudden Paypal dinged our paypal account, which fell thru 
> to our debit card, for $1439.
> We immediately complained, noticing that the spoofer even used his own 
> <?> name in the scam. This
> happened on Thursday. We complained all day Friday. By Sat night the 
> charge was sent back to the
> bank. But for 2 days and a weekend, we were on our knees with the bank 
> account locked out. It turned
> out that Paypal used an old CC# that had been cancelled by the bank<?> 
> but the bank honored it anyway.
> There was a lot of foot-shuffling at the bank when it realized it made a 
> serious error by honoring a card
> that was cancelled at the bank a year before.

Sue the bank for something -- it's the only thing that will get their 
PERMANENT attention on their internal problems.  Lawsuits are overdone, 
but a small-claims suit will have the full attention of their managers, 
their legal department, and a whole lot of people real quick-like... if 
only for a day...

Of course, you'd have to leave the back most likely, but there's plenty 
of banking competition out there.

Not to mention even if you don't sue them or take other very strong 
action against them for honoring a credit card that was canceled or 
expired long-prior to the transaction, you really should pull ALL of 
your business from any organization that does that anyway.

Not saying that another bank might not make the same mistake, but well, 
really they might not.  And pulling all of your business is simply that 
-- GOOD business.

If they can't be trustworthy enough not to put a transaction through on 
a card that doesn't exist... whew... it'd definitely be time to leave 
that bank if that happened to me.  That's a sign that they might have 
severely bad internal processes and procedures and FDIC or not... they 
could be gone tomorrow.

And again, small-claims lawsuit, real lawsuit or none, you MUST report 
what they did to your local banking oversight folks, please.  The 
over-seers can't do their jobs without input.

> The funds will be there tomorrow, but this is my LATEST paypal episode.

All these stories make me want to go dump my PayPal account... I've 
always been slightly nervous about them being virtually a bank but 
without any kind of insurance or oversight, but their practices in most 
of these messages really destroys my confidence that they're responsible 
adults with people's hard-earned money.  Obviously your bank isn't 
worthy of that level of trust either.

At the very least, have a discussion with a VERY high up official at 
your bank, far above "branch manager", even if you have to send/fax a 
written letter of complaint so it gets routed to them.

If the bank is a public company, CC all the members of the Board of 
Directors -- you'll find their contact information on most companies 
public websites, and copying the Board keeps them both in the loop on 
serious problems within the organization so they can "ride herd" from 
the top by putting pressure on the President/CEO to "get his stuff 
together" as well as gives the middle-level to slightly upper-level 
person you intended to get a response from an instant kick in the ass 
that there's people FAR up the chain above him or her watching his/her 
response VERY closely... or at least they'll feel that way, and respond 
instantly and VERY professionally.

Play the game Bob -- and don't back down until they've given you 
something for the time, effort, and lack of access to your funds (and 
from your perspective, missed opportunity costs) as well as perhaps 
making sure that at least one higher level person in the bank has felt 
at least the level of panic and pain that you did.

Being a large organization with lots of complexity of handling lots of 
money and lots of customers does NOT preclude the bank from treating 
your money as if it were their own, if they wish to continue to do 
business with you.

Sorry if I sound harsh, but I don't play nicely with companies that 
screw with my money.  I work too hard for it, and they'd better work at 
least as hard to remedy the situation and offer something to retain my 
business when they screw around with it.

Make it VERY clear that they as a business put a con-artist in charge of 
YOUR money for at least two days, if not three, and you don't TRUST them 
to handle it anymore, and see if they respond in an appropriate way -- 
actions and more than words.  If you don't get action, go higher.  Find 
the person who actually makes real business decisions at the bank.

At least you'll know if you should continue to do business with them or 
not by the end of an hour of phone calls and/or an hour of letter 
writing.  These days, the letter tends to be slow but much more 
effective, especially with the right CC's on them.  The fact that you 
took time to put something in writing in this fast-paced 
e-mail/phone/instant connectivity world and that you're tracking the 
response as well as copying other interested parties on it... gets far 
better overall service than an e-mail or a phone call.  Strange, but 
true -- the "old tech" way of doing business gets better results in the 
"new world".

(GRIN... evil GRIN perhaps, but GRIN nonetheless.)

Nate
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