Take that to the bank – but which bank?

I find it more than an little ironic that despite working for a company whose revenues are fueled by succession issues and more specifically M&A, that I would rail against the spate of mergers that have impacted me personally and nearly on a daily basis.

No, my accountant didn’t decide to go upstream into a larger firm, but for the past two-plus decades, my banks have. Just when I have begun to feel comfortable with one institution, I would invariably receive a notice that they have merged with a larger lender, but promising the same quality service that I have come to expect.

Since this is more or less a civil blog I won’t spice up my disdain of what transpires post-merger with a bank with a sweeping anathema or two, but I’m sure many of you out there have sort of been here and done that.

But first a little chronology:

When my wife and I tied the knot 26 years ago (really?) we enjoyed the services of a small New York-based community bank which excelled in personalized service. Shortly thereafter, they merged up to a larger entity whose customer service and competence were in no danger of winning an award from J.D. Power.

Less than one year later, we transferred our accounts to another local bank with a stellar reputation, a relationship spoiled shortly thereafter when we received the obligatory merger notice from Fleet Bank, truly one of the awful brands in the sector.  Exhausted from this never-ending depository trauma, the bride and I were almost glad when we learned that Fleet was later acquired by the mammoth Bank of America.

Now BOA has certainly taken its lumps of late and while its traditional banking services have been adequate, its dispute resolution department, like one of our previous lenders cited above, is certainly not on the radar of J.D. Power.

Unlike American Express which assigns a team and a case number to your disputed charge, BOA insists that the customer perform most of the basic legwork – i.e. contact the vendor in question etc. My question to them was simple, if I have to do most of the work, why do you even have a dispute department and what exactly do you do?

So lately we’ve been shopping around – with measured caution - and saw that our town recently opened a branch of Wells Fargo, which I always associated as being a West Coast lender. I guess it’s sort of like someone who’s had a series of bad dates and is skeptical of a repeat performance.

Maybe in the end we will decide to bank like my great grandmother did – although we don’t have nearly enough money to fill up a queen-sized mattress.