A Wealth of Bank Horror Stories

Many thanks to those of you who continue to send me reports of identity theft and nightmarish, hair-pulling encounters with your friendly neighborhood banks.

But you can hold your fire for now. After reading hundreds of letters, I think I’ve heard it all.

Victims abound from Santa Barbara County to the Inland Empire and south to the border. They’ve been ripped off at gas stations and mini-marts, among other locations, all over Southern California. Many folks had ordeals almost identical to mine, including the same maddening runaround from banks.

As you may recall, some crook managed to make a copy of my debit card and hit the jackpot at several ATMs, draining more than $2,000 from my account. But to add insult to injury, I followed my bank’s instructions to the letter, only to have it accuse me of being a thief and a liar.

I learned via form letter that my bank had conducted a “thorough investigation,” and concluded that I was responsible for the loss. No elaboration, no explanation. The bank told me it was “closing this dispute,” and then had the audacity to say I was a valued customer.

I called to complain, and, fortunately, my wife wrested away the phone moments before my aorta exploded. I later filed a crime report with the Los Angeles Police Department and sent a rage-filled complaint to my bank, suggesting that someone -- anyone -- quit digging earwax and do some honest work.

While I waited to hear back -- and waited and waited -- tales of woe from readers began piling up on my desk, and many roughed me up for not printing the name of my bank. As I had noted, we ink-stained hacks are not allowed to use the newspaper to settle personal grievances. But readers weren’t buying it.

“You MUST name the bank in question,” wrote Andrew Schwartz of Sherman Oaks, who argued that rather than protect the bank, I should “protect the public from institutions” that will stop at nothing to make life miserable for customers.

Unfortunately, Mr. Schwartz, as I’ve learned from readers, no one bank seems to have a monopoly on inept and insulting customer service. I got missives from exasperated customers of Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual, Citibank and others.

My favorite responses were from the three banks that figured my experience was so miserable, I must be one of their customers. Washington Mutual’s president was ready and eager to help, and so was a Wells Fargo exec.

But Bank of America made my day.

“Your experience sounds suspiciously like a BofA customer service process,” wrote Michael Chee, senior vice president of media relations.

I guess he’d know.

If I’d been running a sweepstakes for the bank with the most complaints, as a Bakersfield reader suggested I should, the runaway winner would have been Bank of America. I heard from nearly twice as many ticked-off BofA customers as all the others combined (not that I’m going to tell you which bank I do business with).

“I’d be willing to make a sizable bet that you are talking about the Bank of America,” wrote Phil Hillman, who called me a dummy for banking with “those people.”

“I bet it was Bank of America,” wrote Irma Zahid. “I am still arguing with them about $67 somebody charged for some dating service in Australia.”

“I’ll bet it was BofA,” wrote Jane Richardson, who suffered an ATM rip-off of $430 in the San Fernando Valley. The bank replaced the money temporarily, just as in my case, and then sent her a “thorough investigation” letter informing her she was out of luck.

Richardson went to the LAPD to file a report.

“The detective told me essentially to forget it -- they would look at the videotape, see it wasn’t me, and then the bank would say ... I put a friend up to it.... The bitter pill is that I am a single working mother and they ended up taking that $430 out right before Christmas -- and it wiped me out.”

I could fill two pages of this newspaper with letters like this. Unfortunately, I’m forced to whittle the offerings.

By the strangest coincidence, my unnamed bank called me the day after my column appeared to say it had received my latest letter of complaint and, lo and behold, it looked like I might have been wronged, after all.

The money in question was being returned to my account immediately, with heartfelt apologies, along with another $1,000 to cover two additional unauthorized withdrawals made by the thieves.

So if this “customer solutions” rep hadn’t seen or heard about my column, as she contended, what had changed to make my bank suddenly realize I wasn’t a thief or a liar? She couldn’t answer that question, nor could she tell me what the earlier “thorough investigation” consisted of, and nobody else at the bank could, either.

Maybe I can help them out.

There was no investigation. Nothing that took more than 10 seconds, anyway.

As I wrote last time, identity theft and fraud are on the rise. Banks lose millions of dollars in these scams, and as a federal bank-regulating agency complained in 2001, they don’t always break a leg to return money to ripped-off customers.

So let me reiterate some of the things you can do to protect yourself: Use cash at gas stations, where, according to law enforcement officials and judging by my mailbag, lots of scams are being run to swipe the information on your magnetic stripe, along with your PIN.

Credit cards are safer than debit cards, because in a case of theft, cash money can’t be drained from your account.

If you have a credit card option on your debit card, use it. You won’t have to type in a PIN, which means no one can steal the number. If you do use a debit card, take notice of nearby people and surveillance cameras before you punch in your PIN.

If you get ripped off, report it to the police, send a copy of the report to the bank by certified mail, call the bank immediately, ask for a supervisor, ask for the addresses and phone numbers of senior executives and all their living relatives, and don’t be bashful about making a stink.

If you’re still not getting anywhere or want to know more about current scams, check out the Identity Theft Resource Center (www.idtheftcenter.org).

And if all else fails, here’s one last suggestion from a reader:

“As a former employee of Bank of America,” wrote Karen Rogers of San Gabriel, “we would tell customers to go to a branch and start talking very loud, as in VERY LOUD, LIKE SCREAMING about what a rotten bank this is, how unfairly you have been treated, etc., etc., and you will immediately get the attention of a high-level person at that branch.”

THAT MIGHT JUST WORK, KAREN. I ENCOURAGE FRUSTRATED CUSTOMERS TO GIVE IT A TRY.*

Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com and read previous columns at latimes.com/lopez.