It's bewildering how far the investment community has become removed from reality. My own investment company (First Miami Securities, or FMS, pronounced “Effin’ Mess”) sent me a statement where it took an hour to figure out what they were saying. Apparently my October 23 payment didn't arrive until November 1 and therefore it got zero return on that payment, but they didn't send my regular statement with the return from my previous balance.
[Author's note: this type of kiting scam where delays are never in your favor turns out to be very common in Florida. This is the type of decline in intelligence that I’ve resented for years, the constant probing by formerly reputable businesses to see what they can get away with from the majority of their clients who don't have the education even question things.
[Author's note: I was saying this long before Enron was in the news.]
Prime example, this $29 fee for “overdraft protection”. The only justification ever given by a bank was that what all the other banks charge. Racketeering, pure and simple. People are just too uninformed to complain, because they think only gangsters are racketeers, not their friendly neighborhood bank manager. How wrong they are.
It reminds me of the time a Bank of America agreed on the phone to lend me cash on an equal value of six CDs I held with them locked in at 5.75% in the previous year. When I got there, the manager himself actually thought I was going to let him cash in all six into one CD paying 1.35% for a year longer than the loan with for which he was going to charge me 9.5%! When I informed him no such thing was going to happen, the stupefied look told me the moron had never been told off by a customer before.
[Author's note: the two banks I had dealt with at this time were Bank of America and Washington Mutual. The bank that tried to rip me off was Bank of America around 47th Ave. and Biscayne in September 2001. I had arranged for a demand loan of $6,000, which would be backed up by $6,000 in Certificates of Deposit. Demand loans are supposed to carry a very low interest rate, because there is virtually no risk. I can pay back the loan instantly anytime the bank asks for the money. Since interest rates had recently taken a dive, I was expecting this loan at around 2%.
The bank manager tried to scam me by getting me to sign that he could cash in my 6 CDs paying 5.75% and roll them over into one CD paying 1.35%. We had agreed to no such thing on the phone, the scumbag waited till I driven over there near the end of a workday. Then he tried to slip this document in with the loan application for me to sign. I purposely had small CDs so that in case I had to cash one in, I would only pay the penalty on $1000.
I remember this incident, for I called him a lying, stinking bastard in front of the entire staff, because he was too much of a coward to tell me on the phone of his dirty trick. Then, to quote me 9.5% on a demand loan when the regular loan rate was only 8.5%, well, make no mistake about it. That lowlife calling himself a bank manager was out to steal my money. I was to learn later that this is standard operating procedure in the state of Florida.]
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