(I sent this letter to Grow’s CEO Robert Fisher and it was ignored)

April 15, 2011

To: Robert Fisher CEO/President
9927 Delaney Lake Dr.
Tampa FL 33619
813-837-2451
813-832-3619 (fax)
From: Robert Johnson
Account #900***

Robert Fisher,

I regret bringing this to your attention and having to waste your time in this matter (along with mine) due to incompetent management who should have not allowed (what I am about to explain to you) to happen in the first place. Please let the tone of this letter express my anger, shock, and dismay.

I was in the market for a mortgage pre-approval and decided to come in to the Saint Petersburg branch on Thursday March 10^th 2011 to inquire, after not getting a response to an initial inquiry that I had made through the website. After waiting for quite some time I was finally taken into the office of Courtney Poole to explain to her my needs. She informed me right from the start that there would be a $50.00 application fee to which I immediately refused. I informed her that I have been a member of this credit union since 1986 and that I have a substantial amount of money in this bank, and that should count for something. She said she would see what she could do and excused herself to speak with her manager. When she came back, she was with a Sandra Underwood who said she would waive the fee if she could walk Courtney through the training process of filling out the pre-approval application. I agreed and we went through a very lengthy process of filling out the application due to Courtney’s inexperience. We finally got finished and Sandra said that she would be getting back to me within a day or two. She gave me her business card and told me to call her cell phone anytime if I needed anything or had any questions. She mentioned email was the best way to reach her as she was up until late at night taking care of business that way. Sandra was very personable and professional, as was also Courtney.

On Friday March 11^th 2011 I received a telephone message from Sandra Underwood notifying me that my application was denied due to the income/debt ratio. She said if I had any questions to please call her back. I decided to wait until the following week to call her back, as there were some questions I had.

On Monday March 14^th 2011 I called Sandra and left a message for her to please call me back. I didn’t get a response within a couple of days so I followed up with an email (Note: I have copies of all email(s) correspondence to everyone mentioned or involved in this letter for your review if needed.) and asked her to please contact me due to some questions I still had. Still not getting a response, I sent her another email some days later and asked her again to please contact me. I never heard anything back from Sandra Underwood.

During the interim of before I even went into the Saint Pete branch to withdraw my funds, and was still waiting to hear back from Sandra, I once again went on the website and sent another message to find out why my other initial website inquiry had went ignored.  This time I did get a response from a Diane Anthony (Sr. Mortgage Loan Officer) who said she was in charge of that department and asked how she could help. I responded that everything was fine, since I was still hopeful I would be hearing back from Sandra at any time now. Once I realized Sandra was not going to be getting back to me and that I was indeed being ignored, I sent another email message to Diane Anthony to let her know that Sandra Longwood was ignoring me and I needed some assistance. This time I was ignored by Diane Anthony and never heard back from her again.

I decided to enlist the help from a gym acquaintance that I know from Lifestyles gym who works at Grow. His name is Rick Diestelkamp and had previously offered to help me anytime I needed anything. So I called Rick on the business number printed on the business card that he gave to me and left a detailed message about what I was experiencing and to please call me back or email me, and left my contact info. This message to Rick went unanswered and was ignored.

Feeling quite frustrated and not understanding why I was getting such inferior customer service I decided to try and send an email to member services (who I was initially corresponding about something completely different) and asked who I needed to speak to in management to voice a complaint. I got no response. This was to Jen (Relationship Specialist), [pfCase:133375, pfTicket:5135854].

Finally I had enough, I felt I had given enough chances for follow-ups and decided to go back to the branch and let them know just how dissatisfied I was. I planned to let them know that the customer service I was receiving was inexcusable and to withdrawal the sizeable funds from my money market account to see if I could finally get somebody’s attention that way. I had no intentions of closing all of my accounts, or any of them for that matter. I just wanted to voice my dissatisfaction and as a final point be heard the only way left I knew how.

On Tuesday April 5^th 2011 I went to the bank teller to deposit a money order, and 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 cause for the record. When she saw the dollar amount I was withdrawing she called over the manager or head clerk who brusquely advised me they didn’t have the funds available that day and I would need to come back, and quickly walked away. Not once did she bother to inquire why I was wanting to make the withdraw or if there was anything she could do. The teller even seemed to be surprised by her demeanor. 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. After waiting for a short while 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 an attempt to query if there was anything they could do to resolve this differently. I was absolutely convinced now that nobody cared and so we pushed forward.

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 readying to leave, I asked if there was anything I needed to sign and Courtney who was holding a piece of paper with the information stated there was a mistake on the paper and that I didn’t have to sign anything. I signed nothing, nor was my ID even checked. I was escorted to my car by a security guard and I left.

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 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 12:30pm realizing I wasn’t going to get a response. I was now going to have a long wait until Monday before anything else could be resolved.

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, as if I were doing something malicious by asking for cash instead of a bank check. I informed her that I wanted it in cash because I wasn’t interested in having to deposit it into a different bank as income, for tax purposes. Regardless, it was none of her business.

After several rounds of us going back and forth, I asked her if I was wasting my time talking to her. 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 complete dissatisfaction 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 accessed 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 head’s would roll.

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

On Tuesday April 12^th 2011 I received a message from Kim 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.

Mr. Robert Fisher, I find this completely preposterous that something like this could happen to a member in good standing since 1986. I understand now that there may be a fee structure in place for large cash withdraws but I also feel it is the credit unions obligation to inform the member that there will be a sizeable withdraw fee, at the time of the transaction. Flora 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! There was never any mention of this and it even feels like this information may have been purposely withheld from me possibly out of spite…(for complaining)… I don’t know? 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. I can tell you I would certainly have done things differently had I known!

On the receipt I was given for the cash withdraw; there was no mention of a fee incurred. Why not? Why wasn’t I given the common courtesy of an explanation of the fees that were going to be charged? Why would I have to find out the way that I did? Luckily I caught it in time to cover checks that were floating because I’m now quite certain that I would also be dealing with NSF fees as well as this $885.00 charge.

(Note: To find the fee rates, you have to search through the website and download a program to even be able to open up an explanation of the fee rates.)

Finally, while talking to Flora about this fiasco 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.”

I look forward to hearing back from you Mr. Fisher,

Robert L. Johnson