I was driving back from Houston (Hi Christa! :-) bye christa.. :'( ) earlier this week and tuned into the Clark Howard radio talk show. Here I learned the story of Matthew Shinnick. I'll let Clark tell the story (http://clarkhoward.com/shownotes/2006/09/21/#boastory):
How the Bank of America blunder went downBy now, you’ve probably heard the story of the San Francisco man who was arrested and jailed when he tried to verify the validity of a check at Bank of America branch. Clark found out about this story and talked with the man, Matthew Shinnick, who has spent about $14,000 in legal fees to clear his name. It all started when Shinnick posted two bicycles for sale on Cragislist and received a check from a man for more than the cost of the bicycles. He went into his bank to see if the check was legitimate and verify that there was money in the person’s account. He was told it was a valid account and so he cashed the check. At that point, BOA employees called the police and Shinnick was arrested on fraud charges because the check was actually a phony. He had no idea that the real criminal had used the name of a legitimate company to fake a check. So, Matthew sat in the bank branch for hours while police figured out what to do and then spent the night in jail. Once he got out, he wanted to clear his name legally so the arrest would not come back to haunt him. He had to hire attorneys to do this and it cost him nearly $14,000. He then went to Bank of America and asked that the bank cover his fees because it was the bank’s error. But so far BOA has refused. This kind of treatment sends the message that banks only care about their bottom line and nothing about their customers. It's unacceptable and it's time to fight back.
1 comment:
An example like this really points at the fact that banks who live and eat due to their customers money, bite the hand that feeds them. No apologies for them and it's no wonder people start to double check any operation they make with any bank, not to get trapped.
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