Yes Evil, with a capital E.
Yesterday I received a check from a Bank Of America customer, I had some concern on if this check would ultimately clear so I headed over to the bank to cash the check directly.
Here is where things get interesting, the teller asked me if I was a BofA customer when I told her no she said that she would need to charge me $5 to cash the check. I told her this shouldn’t be a problem since the check was drawn from a BofA account, she then told me she understood that and she couldn’t even cash the check if that was not the case but that was their policy.
Since I had concerns about the checks long term validity I told her to go ahead, but as we were talking asked her if she knew how much money she would get back if she took a $5 check into my bank (First Technology), here response was probably $5 but BofA is big and greedy.
This reminded me of a story on the news when I lived in Michigan, Comerica (owned by BofA) started charging the girl scouts $1 for each check they cached since they had such a large number of checks associated with their cookie sales; the problem is they make less than a dollar per box.
This was on the news for several days before Comerica responded and said they revised their policy and would not be charging the Girl Scouts this fee.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a capitalist and think that BofA has the right to charge whatever it wants for whatever services they offer just like I have the right not to do business with them but it seems egregious to charge the guy who writes the check and then charge the guy he gives the check to.
While on the topic of BofA they are a huge early adopter of security technology, over the years I have worked with some great people who work there and have worked on some neat stuff with them but I guess I will vote with my pocket book when it comes to my personal life and say no BofA for me.