You guys act like banks are bad. They actually provide a very good service at rock bottom rates. What's the spread between the borrowing rate and savings rate? If you do it right, it's less than 1%. Where else in life is the house profit less than 1%? Plus they give you a bank manager who will respond to all of your requests and which obviates the need to queue up, etc.
Banks can provide useful services. What people staunchly on the side of the bank have failed to do is explain what makes the banks above reproach for their mistake and for the fact that they often screw customers over in ways specifically related to this instance (in addition to other things they have been caught doing). They're just not a white knight good guy that we owe defense to....
That's because nobody has stated that the banks are above reproach. But in this instance, the bank made an error that could have easily been fixed by the couple.
Take the example of somebody losing their wallet. If you find it on the ground, do you 1) spend the money, 2) keep a finder's fee to punish that person for making a mistake that nobody should make, or 3) call that person up and try to return the wallet in a way that is convenient for both of you? Keep in mind during your answer that that person has inconvenienced your day by placing a wallet in your line of sight that had money in it that could be used to purchase things you want.
I'm defending this specific bank in this specific situation. I don't get why you insist that the bad behavior of their industry is relevant at all to this specific situation, where the demonstrated bad faith is all on the couple's side.
With this comment, I think I'm going to bow out of the conversation, because it's apparent that the pro-bank perspective will never see the other side. I will end with this:
To your question about a wallet, I don't know what I would do about a wallet. I would probably call them up if it was in a random park or give it to an authority if it were in an establishment with one. With the stories that have come up, though, I might not now....but that's a different story :).
"That's because nobody has stated that the banks are above reproach." This quote is probably why I'm going to bow out, no offense. The thing is, it has been implicitly stated that the banks are above reproach. For Pete's sake, people taking my viewpoint have basically been accused of victim blaming for trying to say the banks have responsibility in it and that that they caused the situation - a ridiculous and extreme point. In addition, your example of giving back a wallet or not and really all of the analogies used along that line are missing a key point that people keep trying to avoid that I have stated in most of my last messages. When I lose a wallet, I, average Joe citizen, made a mistake in one of my 18,000 daily things I did. When banks take money out of one account and move it to another incorrectly, they are making a mistake at their job. Thankfully in their job, the significant risks are smaller than in other professions, but they're screwing up at their job. That's the difference between the wallet perspective. Also, your comment on would I try to get them to pay a finders fee is silly - no, of course I wouldn't. They made a mistake in one of their, again, 18,000 daily things they did. Fortunately that's not only not what happened, but it happened
in reverse which I'll get to in a bit. When a corporation makes a mistake at their job, it's a little more serious. I don't think the couple should have tried to pay them back 118k and pocket 2k for the inconvenience. I do, however, think regulations should evaluate this in terms of how often it happens and what the banks do when it happens - it =
their mistake.
Moving on from this to your point and Samuel's point about this particular bank in this particular situation, for one, it can't be divorced from the overall ways in which banks act. That is to charge fees whenever they absolutely can. Overall actions of corporations are what drive regulation, so to try to look at this in isolation is flawed. But let's do that, because we don't even have to look at it overall to see the same problem I keep talking about. The bank charged the couple fees on top of the money they incorrectly transferred
in this situation. They've literally made the case themselves. Let's go back to the wallet analogy (even though I've showed why it's flawed) just to argue the point. I'd be happy to have my money back if I lost my wallet because I had made the mistake. I wouldn't be thinking about trying to charge the means through which it got back to me in any way a fee for failing to get it back to me in time or whatever. In this very situation, the bank showed that they are incompetent and jerks, proving why they should take some responsibility in this situation - whether to improve their methods so this couldn't happen again or whatnot. Instead, they doubled down and tried to charge fees for their mistake.