My Bank Charged Me an Erroneous Fee and Fixed It. I Might Leave Anyway for This Reason

Not so long ago, I logged into my checking account to follow up on a payment I was expecting to hit when I noticed that my bank had debited a $15 service fee. When I dug deeper, I saw that it was due to not meeting my bank's minimum balance requirement.

Only here's the thing -- my checking account balance never actually dipped below that minimum threshold. Not even close. So when I saw the $15 charge on my account, I knew that it was clearly an error. And at first, I wasn't all that annoyed, because I figured a quick call to customer service would rectify the issue.

But that's not how things wound up shaking out. And while my bank ultimately corrected the error it made on its own, I'm so annoyed with my poor customer service experience that I'm thinking of leaving my bank altogether.

When customer service is impossible to reach

The bank that charged me a fee erroneously is the institution where I have my business checking account, not my personal checking account. And I think that fact is partly what made my experience all the more aggravating.

When I noticed the erroneous charge posted to my account, I called customer service to try to get it removed. I then proceeded to wait on hold for more than 60 minutes in an attempt to get to a live person before hanging up in frustration.

Now frankly, I find that kind of wait time unacceptable for any bank. But there were two things that, in my mind, made this situation particularly unacceptable.

First, my bank is a major one. I won't name names, but it's one of those banks everyone has heard of. And while I could maybe see how a small community bank would have limited resources and sometimes force customers to wait a long time before getting to speak to an employee, that kind of wait time is just downright ridiculous for a major bank with plenty of resources to fill its call centers.

The other thing that really rubbed me the wrong way is that when you have a business account, you come to expect a different level of service. An issue with a business account could have serious consequences. It could, for example, spell the difference between a company being able to run payroll or not.

Now as the sole employee of my business, I won't pretend that losing access to my $15 had much of an impact. But that's not the point.

The point is that this actually wasn't the first time I'd experienced a really long wait time to speak to customer service at my bank. And that's not an experience I'm eager to repeat. So because of this, I'm thinking of finding a new bank.

You shouldn't have to settle for poor customer service

To make a long story short, my bank must've somehow recognized the error it made on its own, because the next afternoon, I logged into my account and saw the $15 credited back to me. A day or so later, I received an email from my bank explaining that $15 had been charged erroneously and been refunded.

So technically, the bank solved the problem and made things right. Only I don't feel satisfied with that outcome.

What if it had accidentally debited $15,000 from my account, not $15, and I couldn't reach anyone to assist? That's the reason I'm thinking of switching banks. I'm not angry about the missing $15 for 24 hours. I'm angry that customer service just isn't nearly as accessible as it needs to be.

If you're finding that customer service is similarly hard to reach at your bank, then that alone could be a reason to make a switch. You never know when you might have an urgent issue you need to resolve right away. And you don't want to run the risk of having to wait on hold for an hour or more trying to get someone on the line (or, in my case, wait on hold for over an hour and hang up out of frustration).

Of course, you don't necessarily have to switch banks over a single poor customer service experience. But if you find that customer service is consistently poor or inaccessible, then that really is reason enough to make a change.