These last few posts remind me of the "good old days." Our business and personal accounts were at a small "home-town" bank. We knew every teller and most of the bank officers by name. If anything weird happened (returned check or lost check etc.) someone would call and help straighten things out by phone.
Then after almost 50 years with them, the bank was bought out by a big regional bank. Most of the people stayed with the bank, so we got a reprieve. But soon, the "new" bank started streamlining, adding fees, getting rid of old empl*yees, etc.
The last straw was when the bank started charging $3 for night deposits. So DW or I would take the day's checks and cash to the bank just before closing. THEN they started charging $2 to their commercial accounts for every deposit. It's true that our deposits would have been cumbersome as there were always dozens of checks to deal with. But our checking account balance (zero interest) averaged between $35K and $50K.
We tried to negotiate the fees away. Couldn't even reach someone to talk with about it other than "that is our policy." SO, we closed the account and transferred every penny to the last bank in town that was still a home-town bank. Got the same great home-town service there for several years (heh, heh, some of the folks we knew at our original bank had moved over there
)
(Six months after closing the old account, some regional bank exec. called us to ask us why we had closed our account and was there anything he could do to get us back? DW took the call and I won't tell you what she said. Needless to say, the guy never bothered to call back.)
Unfortunately, home-town banks were all going the way of the dodo bird and passenger pigeon. Eventually, the final home-town bank was snapped up by a regional and the fees, hassles, bad service all started again - but not to the same degree. Once again, there were a few years of reprieve as the old tellers and middle management remained loyal to customers. I recall a lady we had know for 35 years who w*rked at that bank as its manager. She was slowly moved out of that position until, to get her pension and her needed paychecks, she ended up as a teller for a couple of years before retirement. Sad - but typical of the era.
But, the old days are just that. They'll never come back. Now, we just have to learn the game that the consolidated banks play and, hopefully, beat them at their own game. Sigh.