By Frank Palardy
This letter is in response to the recent column on bank fees. I had an experience with bank fees right here in Santa Monica at First Federal of California. After they completely redesigned their Web site, it didn’t work at all, or not completely for more than a week. I have a First Fed account tied to Paypal, so all my eBay payments go there. With all the phishing related to Paypal, I’m weary of keeping more money in that account than I need, so I only transfer from my other First Fed accounts when I need to. Their Web site stopped working just as I made a large number of payments as I prepared to go on vacation. Since their Web site was down, I couldn’t transfer money to balance the account so they charged me $23 for each payment, adding up to $1,500. I took them to small claims court here and of course the judge (retired) couldn’t understand the Internet part. Beyond that we both have hearing losses so we couldn’t understand each other. The friendly First Federal simplified everything and told the judge I wrote a bunch of bad checks. They also claimed I should have called their automated phone line for my balance, which would have been difficult even if I didn’t have a hearing loss. Not only did they take advantage of my lack of hearing, but the court offered me no accommodations even as I asked at least three times. Just last year the Supreme Court decided a case that courts are required to make these accommodations, but apparently that doesn’t apply in Santa Monica since they spent all their money of security. There’s more police there than citizens. From what I read (on the Internet of course), First Federal is for sale and they’re milking their customers for every dollar to make themselves look profitable. I’m sure others here in Santa Monica had trouble with their Web site conversion, although the bank denied that in court under oath. There’s endless discussion about homeless people in this paper, but what do you expect if the bank can drain your accounts w
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 9, 2005. Read the original PDF.