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Marquette Bank would have been smart to apologize to Sheryl Stone
By Lauren | July 13, 2009
It’s common practice for banks to charge a fee when non-customers use their ATMs, and equally common for consumers to complain about it. But, according to a recent article in the Chicago Sun Times, Sheryl Stone decided to take action when Marquette Bank in Chicago charged her $3 for using its ATM as a non-customer. Stone found a law firm that specializes in suing banks for fee disclosure violations and filed suit, arguing that Marquette Bank violated the Electronic Funds Transfer Act by failing to post an electronic message or sign on its ATM disclosing its fees before taking her $3.
Almost two years later, Marquette Bank has agreed to settle Stone’s claim, agreeing to pay $90,000 rather than go to court. (If the settlement is approved by the judge in September, Stone will get $1,000, her lawyers will get about $27,000 in legal fees, and the 3,000 or so other customers who were charged a fee at that ATM will be able to split the rest.) Marquette Bank will publish newspaper ads telling the public about the settlement, and has posted a legal notice on its ATM. And the odds are good that Marquette Bank has also paid hefty fees to its lawyers to resolve this embarrassing mess.
It’s possible, of course, that Ms. Stone filed her suit in the cynical hope of landing a financial windfall. Or maybe she’s a wild-eyed, crazy consumer advocate on a personal crusade to punish banks for charging exorbitant ATM fees. But I’d be willing to bet that, at some point early in the process, someone at Marquette Bank missed the opportunity to apologize sincerely to Ms. Stone and return her money. A simple “we should have told you about the fee and we’re sorry” might have saved Marquette Bank a lot of money (at least 30,000 times the fee Ms. Stone paid), two years of aggravation, and a whopping load of public humiliation.
To read the Chicago Sun Times story, go to http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/1651696,CST-NWS-ATM04.article.
Topics: Apologies, Business Ethics, business communications, corporate responsibility, customer relations, ethics |