All over the country Citizen Banks
have been accused for manipulating peoples ATM transactions and debit cards in
order to produce excess overdraft fees. The people that have been cheated
rallied together in a class-action lawsuit, which is a whole group opposed to
one person suing Citizen Bank.The lawsuit targeted over thirty
different Citizen Banks over the country, putting Citizen Bank under pressure
from the masses. US District Judge James Lawrence King of Miami, and numerous
other lawyers took the case to the State District level. Citizen Bank was accused for using software
programs to give out false fees to people who owed nothing to the bank. The
bank tried to cheat some of its customers in order to make more money for themselves.
The bank was changing the order of the debit card and ATM transactions in order
to generate the higher fees. Citizen Bank settled with the charges and paid
137.5 million dollars for this scandal, a rather substantial loss. The action
was not settled by the judge clearly to save the reputation of Citizen Bank.
Jim Hughes, spokesman of Citizens Bank said that he was glad that this issue is
behind us. The trust in banks has always been an issue
since the Great Depression. When the stock market crashed in at the end of the
20s, people were left with no money, and were cheated out of any money they may
have had. Banks in today’s economy clearly reflect that very same dishonesty
that people faced in those days.
Probing Question: What would you have done if you were being
cheated by Citizen Bank? Do you think that the 137.5 million dollars was a
harsh enough sentence for what the bank has done? Do you think other major
banks across the country are also doing this?
If I were in this situation with Citizen's Bank and they were taking money from me, I would have done the same thing that the other people did; create a lawsuit against them. I understand that the economy is bad and people are suffering but when banks start to cheat people, it is a sign that things are getting really bad. 137.5 million dollars is a ton of money but I think that they should have paid the money back to all of the customers that they took overdraft fees from. Just giving a random amount of money to pay won't teach any lesson. I don't think that it has come to the extent that all the banks in the country are taking the same route but I do think that some banks are taking similar actions at the fright of becoming bankrupt. The economy is bad and clearly people are going to do things that are beyond crazy to keep themselves with money.
ReplyDeleteI would have joined in the class action lawsuit and I agree with the monetary penalty but would have liked to have seen some of the executives involved either loose their jobs or not be allowed to be in the banking industry anymore because of their dishonesty. I don't think other banks are doing this because of this exposure they are probably not.
ReplyDeleteI am a member of citizens bank and I personally haven't heard of this issue until John brought it up. If I was cheated out of some of my money then like Katie I probably would have reacted in the same way and sued the bank. But as Katie already stated, that wouldn't change anything. The bank clearly had enough money to pay the sentence. Since the banks takes our money and then we get it back when we want to make a withdrawal, they probably used our money to pay the sentence. Since I'm not in the situation I don't know exactly what I'd do, I know I wouldn't be too happy about the situation though. 137.5 might have and might have not been too harsh. Depending on how much money the cheated people out of. I think that they should have paid whatever amount they got from the fees they charged. I think there might be other banks doing this, but we may just not be aware of it. But, they might not be, we might just not know until a scandal like this occurs to make the news.
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ReplyDeleteIf I was a member of citizens bank, I would have also joined the class action law suit and probably changed banks because of lack of trust. I do not know if 137.5 million dollars is a reasonable sentence because I do not know how much total damage they caused money wise. The sentence should be higher than the amount of money they tried to take from people. There is a good chance that other banks are doing this also, but from what this case has shown, as long as we pay attention to our bills and not just put our full trust in a business, they can always be caught. We shouldn't make it easy for them to get away with things like this.
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