aggravatedI never opened an account with CharterOne. They bought Rochester Community, which was a nice bank that offered free checking, never screwed with my account or failed to live up to any of their promises.
When I moved out of the country, I thought it would be handy to keep some American money in a local bank that I could use when I came home to visit. I didn't know what fees might be involved in leaving an account inactive, so I called their csr and asked if I could have an account that might be inactive for a couple of months at a time. The csr said I could. So I did, only to find out later that I *could* do that, but the service charge on an inactive account was $11 a month. And by "later," I mean that they failed to send me statements for a couple of months, so by the time I found out about this, they had already taken $33.
I complained, of course, only to be told that the csr was technically correct; apparently it was my fault for not phrasing my question more specifically. I countered that if I ask a doctor if I can jump off a highrise building, the fact that, technically, I *can* do it is obviously less relevant than the fact that the consequences are such that it's really not a good idea. Anyone with half a brain would have understood that I was asking, not if it were possible, but what would happen if I did it. The rep, who apparently has spent way too much time watching Jeopardy, insisted that the rep had answered the question I had asked, and even if he hadn't, the rules were the rules, and it was my responsibility to know the rules and abide by them regardless of what their own rep may have told me. No, they didn't have to live up to what their reps say. And they couldn't close my account because there was still $.04 in it, and if I didn't come into the bank (which was several hours away), withdraw the $.04 and close the account by the end of the month, I would be charged another $11, which would put my account in default and trigger a bunch of new fees. I ended up having to take a whole day to go down there and withdraw my $.04 and close the account.
