The bank should have given you a break. One of the reasons I am with the bank I am at is they helped me when I left my ATM card in the machine. The bank was out a couple hundred dollars and they did not charge me anythng.

That’s a lot of money fora buck. 
Cas
That bank would have seen the last of me on that one.

As luck would have it, the Dad happened to be down in that neck of the woods yesterday and today on business. He made a small detour and he and the lad had a chat with the fine folks at that bank who were suddenly a great deal more interested in being reasonable. With a stroke of a pen, the long string of $5 fees were waived though the $25 overdraft fee remained and the lad handed over the cash for it. That is fair, I think.

The account will remain, though the Dad is now on the account so that this sort of thing won’t happen again. The lad does need to learn how to manage his finances and account for service fees, but mailings will also go to the Dad’s house. The lad also has his online account set up and he will check it before withdrawing to make sure he has enough to cover any service fees. If he doesn’t...well...check cashing is still free. If he overdraws again, he is responsible for the fees. He has the tools and the knowledge now, so no excuses.

As the Dad said, “This is the way the world works, kiddo. You know the rules, now follow them.”

Oh, fine.  The parent shows up and suddenly the fees are waived?  Boo, bank.  They didn’t need a parental visit to do what was surely fair.

No, they didn’t need a parental visit. But I have long realized that young people are often dismissed just because they are young. What some businesses forget is that they grow into responsible consuming adults who have long memories. Screw a kid today and lose a customer tomorrow. The lad informed me that he has little intention of using that bank unless he absolutely has to. The home bank here suits his needs quite well. And they provide overdraft protection as long as there is some cash in his savings account. In fact, they even let *me* activate his debit card today and let *me* change the PIN number to the one he prefers. That’s home town service.

Back in the day I worked at a community bank that had decided to raise its fees for various infractions as a sure-fire way to make money. One of the “sins” was to have less than $50 in an account. A monthly fee was assessed until the thoughtlessness of the customer was corrected.

I recall the department manager getting a furious call from a parent whose child’s personal bank account had been fined to oblivion and closed. The poor kid had been prudently stowing all of his birthday money in an account—and learning about saving and planning for the future—but his amassed fortune was only $35, so he was subject to the fines.

Needless to say, the fines were refunded and the account re-opened, but why would the parent ever encourage the child to bank there again? (That financial institution went out of business.)

I worked at a commercial bank way back in the day. We were about 3 doors down from RIT and NTID and a block or so away from Xerox. That was way back before online banking or ATM machines. Predictably, every month at bank statement time we girded our loins for the onslaught of angry customers who had been serviced charged for one thing or another. Waiving fees was pretty much up to our discretion and we had already learned that dinging students who didn’t have much to begin with was a really bad business move. My fee waiving pen was busy for a couple of days every month. The Xerox people were possibly among the most frugal and penny pinching people I’ve ever met and even a $.04 service charge for one thing or another brought them into the bank with fire in their eyes. We’d also learned that waiving fees for them was prudent because they tended to also have large Certificates of Deposit with us and, for the sin of an unwaived $.04 service charge, they showed absolutely no hesitation to yank all their business, including CDs if the service charges weren’t waived. The squeaky wheel principle and all. Worked then and I think it still does. Onerous service charges are an especially bad business plan, in my opinion.