Patch Blog: My Bank Is A Person (Mitt Romney Said So)

My bank is Wells Fargo. My bank is a corporation. And my bank, according to Mitt Romney and the Supreme Court, is also a person.

I’m not convinced, and here’s why. A few years ago I had the misfortune of running very low in my checking account, and as I went around town making purchases with my ATM card I was careful not to exceed my balance. Naïve soul that I was, I figured that by using my ATM card as a debit card the bank would only approve my purchases if I did indeed have the necessary funds to cover those purchases.

I knew that if I didn’t have enough money in my account, my purchase would be denied, so I thought my buying strategy was sound. Unfortunately, it was the weekend and I didn’t quite get how things worked come Monday at midnight when all outstanding requests for payments are presented to my bank.

Somehow I had forgotten about an automatic payment arrangement attached to my checking account, plus a $125 check to Little League that arrived for payment two months after I had written it. Just like that, I was over my limit.

As bad as I felt about this, and recognizing my own responsibility for forgetting about the auto pay and the baseball check, I figured I’d be out only a few bucks (I had made five smallish purchases at the market for less than $15 each).

Well, not exactly—my overdraft charges amounted to $180! I wondered how this could be, and when I examined my checking account I noticed that the bank had paid off the largest check first (Little League of course) and then every other check, in descending order, largest to smallest. By doing so, the bank had zeroed out my balance meaning that six requests for payment could not be fulfilled.

The bank, I mean the person, charged me $30 for each of those six, relatively small, transactions. It was the old “we pay largest to smallest trick!”

Heartened by Mitt Romney‘s assertion that “corporations are people,” I decided to call my bank and speak to a person. I think an actual person did eventually get on the line, but when I told that person (a woman I believe) about how her bank had processed my overdrafts, the person, at first, denied it.

Then she said that the bank processed overdrafts in the order they are received; then she said they processed them randomly; then she finally admitted that the bank processes overdrafts—in every case, without exception, down to the penny—from largest amount to smallest.

She said they did this as a “courtesy” to bank customers, that by fulfilling larger checks in descending order the bank was most likely paying off more important items. I thanked the person for her paternalism and eventual honesty, and asked her to please stop treating me so courteously. I asked that she do just the opposite, in fact, and pay my overdrafts from smallest to largest—but she said the bank could not be quite that courteous.

Yes, they were looking out for my best interest, but no they could not honor my request. I pointed out to the person that by processing overdrafts from largest to smallest, the bank was generating for itself the maximum number of overdraft fees. I wondered if maybe that fact had any impact on the bank’s overdraft policy? The person wasn’t sure. I asked to speak to her supervisor and that person, or what I presumed to be a person, had no idea about the reasoning or motivation behind the bank’s behavior.

So there I was out $180 in overdraft fees for $75 in ATM charges that the bank had approved at the time of purchase, all of which got me wondering about the personhood of my corporate buddy. Somewhere, I thought, there just had to be a person I could reason with.

I gave it one last try and contacted the bank’s corporate headquarters. I knew that sitting in a corner office in San Francisco was the person who had authored the bank’s policy on overdraft fees, and that in all likelihood that person was very proud of his or her work. But try as I might, I couldn’t locate the stand-up person who had designed the policies that had treated me so courteously. To this day I can’t figure out why.

Where did all of this investigation of Wells Fargo leave me? Well, to be honest, I’m still not certain if I ever spoke to an actual person with an actually beating heart, and I can’t with 100% certainty assert that my bank is an actual person, but I have some advice for the alleged people that work at that bank.

When devising policies that attempt to serve your customers, who after all are people, ask yourself this important question—would I be ashamed to offer, in good faith, this policy to my next door neighbor or a family member?

If the answer is yes, don’t do it. Any person should know that.