Connectedness offers ways to be heard

The North Country has gotten hot

Aggrieved customers like me have taken to posting complaints on the Citizens Facebook page so, following happy, colorful posts about the bank supporting Pride month or Juneteenth, you see things like this:

“You guys need some serious help as far as communication. We as customers can never get through. We call and wait 20 to 40minute wait times: the chat is always down never works: there’s no email we can’t email you guys or even send messages here nobody …”

“IT IS GETTING VERY TIRING of your algorithms not working right to flag fraud vs real transactions. Multiple times shut down and no one answers the phone on either regular line or fraud line. No one. I’ve let it go all night and no one answers despit…”

“They don’t answer the phone after they wrongly flag your account for fraud cutting off your access to any of your money. Theft. Hours on end no answer. FDIC and AG offices being contacted. This has gone on too long. Your systems are not flagging c… “

“I contacted you twice via chat about trouble with your new website, thinking it would be faster. Waited over an hour for a reply both times. When I first logged into your "new and improved" website, there were 5 options to download my transactions to i…”

Citizens has one customer service number, and every time you call, a voice tells you you’ll be waiting for 20 minutes or more. But if you post on the bank’s Facebook page, someone named “Jeanie” or “Tamika” or “Beth” immediately responds, promising to look into it if you’ll just send her a private message with the details. When I did that, “Jeanie” responded politely, promising to “escalate” my concerns “to our highest office for further assistance.”

I detailed my travails with Citizens, involving fraudulent use of my debit card that the bank has refused to acknowledge, in last week’s column. More than 35 people responded, many with their own Citizens horror stories.

You’d think it would occur to someone at the bank they’d do better by responding to their customers than posting empty happy talk on Facebook.

You’d think it would occur to lots of companies that the short-term profit of ripping off customers through unjustified fees and alienating them with poor customer service is not worth the long-term damage to their reputation. 

But banks make billions off fees, and they keep those billions by refusing to respond to complaints. The business model resembles Facebook’s, where information is collected on users and resold for cash. In both instances, what appears to be secondary to the business — transaction fees and data collection — is actually central to it.

A comment on last week’s column from Renee linked to a story about a $9 million fine the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has levied against Citizens for its refusal to acknowledge debit and credit card fraud on its customers’ accounts.

But that fine is ineffectively low. How many millions has Citizens held onto by rejecting refunds for fraudulent use?

A couple of commenters, including Paul K., the former branch manager for Citizens in Queensbury, suggested making a complaint to the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which I intend to do. A friend who read the column told me he did that, and it worked, although it took more than a month.

What I now understand is, although the bank’s stated policy is that customers are covered in cases of fraud, its actual policy is the opposite. So it’s not enough for me to prove the fraud. I have to make such a nuisance of myself I come to the attention of someone with the authority to make an exception.

It’s ironic that Facebook can be used in service of my campaign, since Facebook is so often the source of our frustration and alienation and division.

Online connectedness, which has led to the destruction of local journalism, also offers avenues for fighting back against the profit-driven institutions that exploit us. We still have ways to be heard.

It’s hot

I’ve lived in Saranac Lake and Lake Placid and Malone, where it’s common in winter to warm up your car before getting into it, so you don’t freeze. But I’ve started doing that on occasion this month because of the heat. On Wednesday, for example, I started the car, with the air conditioner on full blast, 5 minutes before we went out, because the temperature was 94 and the day unbearably oppressive. We have only small window units in our house to cool things down, so we went to Spot Coffee to luxuriate in the powerful air conditioning. I wonder if the increasing heat is going to start affecting all the great outdoor events in Glens Falls, like Take a Bite and the food truck corral at the Shirt Factory. Are we going to start canceling events for heat?

Boys play outside Crandall Public Library in Glens Falls on June 28 during the library’s summer reading kickoff celebration.

Pony rides and food trucks draw a crowd every Thursday evening to the Shirt Factory grounds at the corner of Lawrence and Cooper streets in Glens Falls.