On Thursday March 10^th 2011 I went to Grow’s Saint Petersburg Branch to get a mortgage pre-approval. I spoke to a teller named Courtney Poole. I was informed there would be a $50.00 application fee, and I told her I refused to pay it after being a customer since 1986. After speaking with her manager, Sandra Lockwood she said she could waive the fee if she could walk Courtney through the training process of filling out the pre-approval application. I agreed.

After getting inferior customer service (calls and messages ignored) while waiting for the results of the pre-approval I decided to withdraw the funds from my money market account.

On Tuesday April 5^th 2011 I went to the bank teller to explain why I wanted to withdraw my money market funds. I carefully explained to the teller what I was doing and why. I asked her to let my account reflect this for the record. When she saw the dollar amount I was withdrawing she called over the manager (Flora) who rudely advised me they didn’t have the funds available that day and I would need to come back, and quickly walked away. The teller seemed to be the only one interested in preserving my business and asked me if there was anything she could do. I just told her to let her superiors know why I was doing this and for them to feel free to contact me should they want to.

On Friday April 8^th 2011 I went back to the bank. I was ushered into Courtney Poole’s office once again. I let her know what I was doing and also informed her that I had come in on Tuesday and from during that time and today, nobody had even made a single attempt to see if there was anything they could do to resolve this differently. I asked Courtney at this time if there were any fees involved like they were going to charge me for the pre-approval application fee. She laughed and said, “No”. I was brought to a back office where we counted out my cash withdraw with the original teller whom I had seen on Tuesday, and with Courtney Poole witnessing. As I was getting ready to leave, I asked if there was anything I needed to sign and Courtney who was holding a piece of paper with the withdraw information stated there was a mistake on the paper and that I didn’t have to sign anything. I signed nothing, and my ID was never even checked. I walked into the credit union that day and without even signing anything or having my identification checked, I walked out with thousands of dollars!

On Saturday April 9^th I went to my account online and noticed my checking account had been debited $885.00 for what was labeled a- Cash Withdraw Fee. I immediately began calling member services to find out what this was about and got nowhere. After lengthy holds I was eventually told it would need to be taken up with the Saint Pete branch management and that there was nothing they could do on their end since it was a “different branch”. I emailed Courtney, left voicemail messages and tried to contact anyone who could help explain what this charge was for. By this time it was getting close to the office closing for the day and I was put on hold for another 20 minutes waiting for the manager of the Saint Pete branch to respond. I finally hung up after 12:30 pm realizing I wasn’t going to get a response.

On Monday April 11^th 2011 I received a message from the branch manager Flora from Saint Pete to give her a call if I had any questions. I called back and was finally put in touch with her. She explained I was charged a fee for withdrawing my funds in cash instead of a check. She said if I was expecting her to waive the charge, she was not going to reverse the charges and “I was wasting my time”. Out of desperation I even asked her what if I brought my money back to be re-deposited into my account, and if that would settle the matter. She told me that if I brought the money back it would “have an additional charge to be deposited again”. I was completely flabbergasted. I asked to speak to her manager and she gave me the name and number of Kim Falano. I immediately called Kim Falano and left a message on her voicemail and asked her to call me back. Kim called after-hours and after asking a few questions about what had exactly transpired said she would research it some more in the morning and get back to me the next day. She was very shocked to find out that I was not required to sign for the withdraw, or even asked for my ID. I was thinking that finally head’s would roll!

(Note: while waiting for Kim to call back I emailed Courtney Poole to ask her to give me the complete name of her manager and the teller involved- this request went ignored.)

On Tuesday April 12^th 2011 I received a message from Kim Falano in the late afternoon asking me to please give her a call. I called her back and she stated that after talking it over with her team, she had decided to NOT waive the fee.

I understand now that there may be a fee structure in place for large cash withdraws but I also feel it is the banks or credit unions obligation to inform the member that there will be a sizeable withdraw fee, at the time of the transaction. Flora, (the branch manager) mentioned to me (after the fact) that this new fee rate went into effect about 5 years ago, but I’ve been a member for 25 years and was never informed as far as I can tell! When I first went into the bank I was immediately told that there would be a $50.00 application fee for a pre-approval, so why wouldn’t there be mention of an $885.00 fee for a cash withdraw? On the receipt I was given for the cash withdraw; there was no mention of a fee. (Note: To find the fee rates, you have to search through the Grow website and download an Adobe program to even be able to open up an explanation of the fee rates.)

Lastly, while talking to Flora about this, I asked her who was authorized to go into my account to withdraw this fee of $885.00, after the fact? She assured me that it was “system generated and prepared automatically at the time of the withdraw”. She promised me that there wasn’t anyone who personally went into my account and manually placed a fine against me and withdrew my money from my checking account. Why wasn’t the charge printed or even mentioned on my withdraw receipt then in time for me to say something before leaving the bank? Then she chuckled, “I knew you would be angry when you noticed the charge.”