When my youngest was born we had a situation where the teenager in the house dropped money everywhere (mostly pennies) and I was worried about the new baby swallowing one. Since the teen was rather dense and rebellous I taught Rachel who was age 3 to pick up all the money she found and put it in a 1 gallon wine bottle that I turned into a bank. After 3 yrs and 3/4 of a gallon of change the weight of the money broke the bottle so I figured it was time to cash it in. It ended up being $100! I figured that it was time to have the kids open bank accounts and learn about saving money. <br /><br />Time goes by and we get a plastic one gallon bank and then the kids get paid $20 each for helping the land lord and I say lets go to the bank and do a deposit (partly because I know the state has a law that inactive accounts become state property after 3 years). We get there I write the deposit slips and send each child up to the window to do their banking and low and behold the bank has wiped out their accounts with maintenance fees. You see they let us open up these accounts with less then the minimum deposite and then happily applied fees till they wiped out the girls' money. You should have see the heart broken look on they youngest childs face as she asked, "Where's my money?" They should have told us about the fees or offered the kids a banking product designed for them to learn about saving.<br /><br />So customer service is doing research to see what happened even though the teller already told me what happened and they have this chance to sort it out. I warned her I was what they call the rule of thirty in customer service- one bad customer experience and the average person will tell 30 people, Except the rule of thirty was invented before Face book and social media so I think I my value is much more than the rule of 30- and I bear grudges along time. There is a chain shoe store that I've been boycotting for 20 years over bad customer experience that didn't even happen to me, I just observed it. I only relented on the boycot with other franchises of that store after 12 years but haven't spent a dime in the original story in 20 years and that was huge mistake on their part as I now have kids, girls no less, and girls dont get by with just two pair of shoes. <br /><br />So papa bear is 5 kinds of pissed off and if the girls dont at least get their money back, preferably with 3 years interest and an apology I'm going to war. Going to strap on my 3rd degree black belt in telephone and email judo and burn up the social media on this. Including all the local TV stations that do the investigations suggested by views as well as at least one local radio station's morning show. And we may just make placards and go stand on the public side walk outside the bank and tell every passer by just what kind of crooks the bank is and how they rip off children. The fact that that bank sits right on Maverick Square which is a major square with a subway station and bus stop in East Boston is just gravey. Forget about the power of the youngest to put a little drama into the hurt look and look like she's at the edge of tears is going to get a reaction. yeah I'm pissed and the kids will get their money back or I'll exact a pound of flesh out of Soverign bank in bad publicity.<br /><br />So if you have a Sovereign or Santandar bank (one owns the other I guess) near you dont let your kids bank with them, better to put the money under the mattress or bury it in the back yard.<br /><br />Corporations suck!
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