All Things Patrick - Working Hard to be Lazy!

AKA I don't want to see the inside of a bank for 2 years... or I might go postal ;)

For those of you familiar with my recent Bank of Amerika issues, you can skip to today's (this week's?) events.

To give some pre-historic background on this, I used to bank at Capitol Federal (CapFed), a Kansas only bank that only deals with personal accounts. I emphasis Kansas because while some loans (like possibly car loans) they may give out to anyone, they only do home loans as long as the house is in Kansas. Local Investigative News didn't bother to do any research a couple of years ago and gave them a bad rap because they gave a home loan to a white family, but not a black family. Um, the 1 home was in Kansas and the other was in Missouri... Anyways, I hadn't had any issues with them other than an ATM & 3 checks in 1 deposit.

A friend of mine, Eric Gometz, had been trying to get me to try out Bank of America's online banking for a number of years, but I'd resisted. CapFed did what I needed it to for the most part. Then I moved to Eric's home town, Pittsburg, KS... apparently the only college town in Kansas that CapFed does not have a local branch in. Bank of America does and I needed someplace I could deposit checks from work until I was able to get things set up for direct deposit. Bank of America also made it easy for me to transfer money to Eric for a car loan.

I think it was around 2005 that I opened my personal account with Bank of America (BoA). I've not had any problems with BoA, but like many big companies apparently lots of people have had issues with them. The online banking has been great and is so easy to deal with I rarely even go to the bank... usually it's only to withdraw cash from the ATM for the few rare things I can't pay with credit card or can't easily do bill pay for.

With my recent gig I've made enough to actually get an incorporated business and try to get a business banking account set up... This is where the real fun begins...

I went to BoA and set up a business account. The account manager didn't say much about me having all the paper work, but it made everything go smoothly. He was a nice guy and remembered they were having a promotion for new business accounts - whatever, but extra is nice I guess.

I then had him deposit a check (greather than $10k USD) from a client as the initial deposit. This is probably where I went wrong, but considering what transpired later I'm not sure it would have mattered.

The client is a new start up with 2 partners. There must have been some miscommunication as 1 had written a couple other checks to pay some employees and forgot to add more money. A week later (always have to wait a week before seeing if it went through, right?) and boing! Check bounced.

Considering all of the businesses BoA does business with I can't believe they'd have a cow over a measley $10k. Oh well, they had a cow (to bad it wasn't an angus), charged me a $6 return fee, marked my business EIN as a risky business, and shut down my account.

I'm in the next day (too late to do anything the day I discovered it) to see why I can't add money to it. The same guy that helped me set it up the week before is helping me and he runs into a problem. He tries something else and still can't fix it. After a couple more tries he gives up and calls the 800 number. He went round and round with whoever he was talking to (yes, a BoA employee trying to be helpful - they do exist!). He's trying to explain that it was the client's check that was bad. Trying to explain I'm here to take money from my personal BoA account and put into this business account. Doesn't matter... maybe he's talking to 1 of the BoA employees who really doesn't care? He's left with no authority and can't do anything to help other than refund me the $6 charge. I'm thankful for him trying, but I'm frustrated... And now wondering what the rest of the banking world will look like.

After calling Eric and talking with him and Carol, getting a different perspective on it... Eric and Carol also being baffled at why a client's check bouncing means BoA doesn't want my money, suggesting I call the 800 number to see what I can do...

I call the 800 number while being frustrated, angry, and depressed - I just want this to get fixed and go away... I didn't even think about asking to talk to a supervisor. I get the same baffling we don't want your business that the guy who helped me earlier at the bank got. I asked if they were sure they didn't want any of my business because I'll take all my accounts elsewhere and be sure to tell my friends. Oh, we're happy to take care of your personal accounts. We just can't do business with your business.... Which means I'll be taking all of my business elsewhere and everybody will hear about this. Fine, whatever.

Asking around somebody suggested 1st National Bank (of Kansas, not of Missouri, Olathe, or the billion other 1st Nationals). I called USAA Savings Bank (I have my car insurance, renter's insurance, and a credit card through them as well) and set up a personal bank account after reading Why USAA Is The Greatest Bank Ever and discovered #3 - using a scanner to scan and upload a check in order to deposit it. Although USAA is the greatest ever (see #2 for why mentioning USAA shuts up any insurance salesman), they don't handle commercial bank accounts.

So I went to CapFed and that's when I discovered they don't handle commercial bank accounts either... But the lady that helped me stated her and her husband opened their business bank account at Metcalf Bank and it was a great bank. Ok, whatever.

I went over to 1st National Bank of Kansas, walked in, and looked completely confused. A nice lady came over and asked if I needed help. After informing her that I needed to set up a business account she asked if I had an appointment (I need an appointment to bank?). She let me know that the business account manager had a couple of appointments, but he'd be available later... She also made sure I had all of the paperwork I needed for a commercial account.

I went home, worked on some stuff, got a phone call from 1st National, drove back over, and when I walked in the lady was there to greet me and ushered me over to meet with the business account manager. He was impressed that I had everything organized in a nifty binder and I even had every piece of necessary paperwork to open the business account (it pays to pay a good accountant). A couple hours (eons?) later, a photocopy of my drivers license and a credit card, lots of typing, and a $100 deposit (making sure there's at least something in it this time) everything is set up. I head home, jump on the computer to sign up for online banking, go grab my paperwork from the other room, get halfway through filling out the 1st page of the form when the page reloads and Due to inactivity your session has timed out for your safety!... I was logged in? Am I missing something?

Not only did it push me off the form page it didn't bother to save any of my information. Fine, maybe they got the kid down the street to write this part. I go back to the 1st page, click my way back to the form, & this time I'm typing all the crap into a text editor, copy & paste it into the browser, and then click continue... page 2, ugh! I continue the text editor, copy & paste game until I get through all of the pages of the form...

It then asks me to download this PDF, print it out, and mail it in. I'll repeat that - they want me to snail mail a printed on paper PDF. Green?

I get a new check from the client that night with the information that the 1 partner just deposited almost 3x as much as the check is for into the account so there wouldn't be a problem... I notice that the check is not from 1st National Bank, it's from Metcalf Bank.

I don't want to be sitting on this for yet another entire week before I can get moving on dumping my current hate relationship with BoA. Next day I head over to Metcalf Bank, and go through the process to open a business account. Less than an eon later (an eon in these instances is the time it takes for me to go from hot or comfortable to frozen to the bone), a trip out to my car to get auto insurance (yay, made me remember to print out my latest auto insurance card from USAA - the card I had expired in Feb *whistles innocently*), photocopies of that and drivers license, another $100 deposit to start it off, and I was almost done... I also had her deposit the check I got from the client, which she informed me she was able to transfer the money directly to my account because the account was also with the bank.

Yay! I have money!

When I got home I couldn't log into the online banking even though it had been set up. Next day I try to login and still can't. I call customer service and discover I'm using the wrong login (you know, the 1 that's not written/printed in any of the paper work I got). I hang up thinking that's all I need, successfully get through the signup/login screens, and I can't see any account information. Unfortunately it's already past 5pm and nobody's home... Yay for 24 hour banking =)

Next day I login, click the chat link, and ask for help via a nifty Java applet. I get disconnected, but apparently the person was able to get enough information to do something as I got an email stating everything has been fixed and my login (the original 1 that's in the paper work) and secret word should be all I need...

Eureka! I can see my account details! It's now 2 days later I don't have money and the initial $100 deposit is $95...

I keep clicking through all sorts of stuff, but the only info I'm able to get on the check is the scanned image. I click the chat link again and ask for help. I explain I'd like any information possible on why the check was removed from my account. After a couple of minutes the helpful person replies that the only information is that there was an irregular signature probably meaning that the person who signed it was not authorized.

ROFLMAO. I have to or else I'd go postal :) The person who signed the check is the primary partner and the primary on the bank account... If anybody is authorized, it's him.

I call my contact up and let him know. He's ticked off cause he still can't pay me. I laughed cause he's more upset than I am about it. I send him account information for a wire transfer or direct deposit and go on with my day.

A day or 2 later I get a cashier's check from the client... Made out personally to me. I'm hoping it's not a problem and send an email to my accountant. He replies that I just need to endorse it over to my corporation, deposit it directly to the business account, and make sure the client fixes their paperwork.

I deposited the cashier's check on Tuesday. The teller asked for ID to make sure I was the initial receiver of it and made sure each and every letter matched. So there shouldn't be any problems with the check this time around.

So today I figure I'll work on messing around with trying to get some external bank accounts set up so I can transfer money from my business account to my personal accounts... I need to reimburse myself for all the business expenses I've been putting on the credit card while trying to get this check deposited. I knew it would at least be slightly annoying because when I asked via the online chat yesterday they responded that I'd need to call customer service to do that.

I went in to work at the client's office today as we were going to have a work night. I left for lunch and figured I'd be gone for an hour... it ended up being 2 hours (a 3 hour tour?)

After picking up lunch I called thinking I just needed to talk to customer service. They informed me I needed to download and fillout the forms available online. I asked where they were at and they asked if I was near a computer. When I said no, they said they couldn't help. So, I drove home (it was nearer than the office at this point) and called again. They then transferred me to the person that could help me find the documents I needed online. He promptly informed me that I would need to go in to an office branch to fill out the forms, any branch should have the needed forms available...

Oh, like that branch I drove past on my way home? /me smacks forehead

I ended up driving over to the branch and figured I'd just go ahead and get a cashier's check to deal with the BoA account and try to get set up to do a transfer, direct deposit, bill pay, whatever to my USAA account. I did get the cashier's check, but was informed the receiving bank is supposed to initiate the direct deposit (this sounds weird, but I was informed by another person that this is correct) so apparently I didn't need those forms I drove over there for...

Since I had the cashier's check and I was driving by a BoA on my way back to the client's office I figured I'd stop by and drop off the cashier's check. I was hoping this would go quick as rush hour was nearing and the past 2 weeks. It. Took. Too. Long... And not only that, but then she states she noticed I'm using their super duper platinum credit card, but wanted to know if I wanted to upgrade to their super duper uber platinum super saver credit card. I just wanted to yell out that I'm closing my accounts next week, but I figured I'd have to sit an extra hour of grilling about why I wanted to leave, are you really sure you want to leave, are you really really sure you want to leave... Which I know I'll have to sit through next week when I close the account anyways >.<</p>