I now need to go see Coldplay live. What a fun show. Love the interactivity…

Stolen from facebook:

A boss plans, organizes, and coordinates. A leader inspires, motivates, and galvanizes. A visionary perceives an improved reality.

An entrepreneur does all of the above under great personal risk and sacrifice knowing for certain that they will never received praise or acknowledgement and having only the slightest possibility of ever receiving any financial reward.

True entrepreneurs are an economic and psychological anomaly. We do it for the thrill of the hunt and the adrenaline of the game. We do it to maximize of locust of impact to have a meaningful impact for our fellow men. We do it to find out if we can.

All of us should be grateful, as I am, that entrepreneurs continue to take unimaginable risks at illogically insane personal sacrifice to strive towards the vision of building meaningful improvements for us all. I can assure you that those who believe the government could ever do this have never really known a true entrepreneur.

Yes, thank God for entrepreneurs!

Because they made me feel like an idiot for doing business with them. Again.

Here’s the story:

In May of this year, I took my seven and five year old children to the local Bank of America branch on a Saturday morning, with about $115 each that they’d been saving. My goal was to open a simple savings account, so that they could start learning what it was like to have a bank account, and the value of saving money with someone you could look in the face and talk to.

We opened two savings accounts, with me listed as the custodian and deposited the money. They both wrote down their deposit in the free deposit book that BoA gave us.

I’m pretty sure I asked lots of questions about fees and interest rates, because I distinctly remember hearing that the interest rate was ridiculously low (like 0.1% interest) and I don’t remember hearing anything about fees. I’ve been screwed by BoA before on fees on other accounts I have open with them (they charged me a $25 service fee on an checking account with $50 in it, because I wasn’t using the account (WTF?)), so I know I asked about them, and I don’t remember hearing anything from the bank officer about fees, that said, I could be wrong. It was six months ago, and I made the mistake of trusting them again…

About a month later, the boys and I took another $100 or so in change to the bank, and had them sort and count it, and then we deposited the money evenly into both of their accounts.

Because it’s a savings account, we get a statement once a quarter.

This morning, we got the second quarterly statement from BoA, and I opened it, just because I wanted to see what their balance was.

I was surprised to see three $5 charges for “monthly service fees” on the statement.

I grabbed the paperwork we got from the bank when we opened the accounts, and the boys deposit books and drove to the bank to talk to the bank officer that I opened the accounts with.

She doesn’t work there anymore. Figures.

So I sit down with another banker. As calmly as I could, I asked her to “refund the money that they’ve taken from my kids, close the accounts, and give me the cash, so I can go do business with a bank that my kids can learn to trust with their money.” I should have said “stolen from my kids” btw, because that’s what it feels like.

I was upset. I was upset because I felt like an idiot. Here I was trying to teach my children the value of saving money, and working with a bank that they could go into and talk to a banker at, and what lesson did I learn that I can teach them?

I guess this statement sums it up: “Never use Bank of America for anything!”

Seriously. What other conclusion can I draw from the last six months?

We took our money into the bank. We sat with a banker for an hour while she explained the accounts to the boys and I. We got our deposit books, and while disappointed with the super crazy low interest rate, we figured that having the experience of walking into a bank every few months, depositing cash, getting a receipt and seeing our balance grow would be a super powerful lesson for them about the value of saving your money. Isn’t that what we should be teaching our kids, considering the current state of the economy?

Instead, we got a lesson that goes something like “Don’t trust your bank” or “You’ll make more money keeping your money in your ceramic piggy bank at home, than you will be entrusting it to a real bank.”

Ugh. So pissed at myself for trusting Bank of America.

Anyways, after the banker looked into the two accounts, she informed me that they’d charges us the $5 fee six times. Once each month since we opened the account.

I asked her as politely as I could to refund the entire $30 for each boy, close the account and hand me the cash. She told me that she wasn’t authorized to go back more than 3 months. I asked to see her boss.

He came over and told me he didn’t have the power to go back more than 3 months either. I asked if his boss was at the bank today. It was a Saturday, so his boss wasn’t there, but they both told me they could file a ticket and that the big boss would look into it on Monday.

“Fine,” I said, “close the accounts and I’ll deal with it on Monday.”

Moral of the story there: “Bank of America lets a stupid computer make a bad decision to charge us $5/month for six months, but won’t authorize a human the power to make a right decision and refund us $30.”

So, I closed the accounts, took the cash, and will be going into a credit union on Monday to open two kids’ savings accounts, or I might call USAA to open two kids’ savings accounts with them.

I’ve had an account at Greater Texas Federal Credit Union for almost 20 years now. It was my college bank, and when we got out of college, we left about $50 in the account. They’ve never charged me a fee for having that account open, and even pay us interest on it, and I trust them to not make me feel stupid for doing business with them.

Ditto Navy Federal Credit Union… my wife has used them for savings accounts and car loans for twenty years. Love them too.

I’ve used USAA for at least 15 years now too, and trust them to not make me feel stupid. In fact whenever I call them, I feel good about doing business with them. Every time.

Bank of America, you just lost my trust forever, and I’ll make sure my children never bank with you, and hope that everyone that reads this thinks very hard about doing business with you too.

A person would have to be an idiot to do business with Bank of America, and I refuse to be an idiot again.

I’ll be closing my business and personal checking accounts at BoA on Monday too, btw. I’m sure someone else will be happy to make sure I don’t feel like an idiot for doing business with them. I’m not the only person leaving BoA, there are lots of others. It’s not that hard to move your money, folks.

Want to read more stories like this? I’m sure you can find them on BankofAmericaSucks.com.

• Arrive early. Go to the bathroom and make sure you’re presentable. Wash your hands. Then proceed to the office looking your best and confident of your first impressions.
• Be prepared for any question, no matter what stage you think the process is in. Every answer you give matters.
• If you’re interviewing with multiple people, don’t assume they’ve talked to each other about you. Answer the same questions with the same answers if needed.
• Bring multiple copies of your resume on simple but heavy paper.
• Ask questions when given the opportunity
• Ask good questions that show you understand business
• Ask questions that show you care about the job and the company you’re interviewing with
• Ask questions about the job, and about the culture of the company
• When the interviewer says “do you have any questions for us?” don’t just say, “nope, I think I’m good” – it sends the wrong signals.
• Act interested. Sit up during the interview. Don’t lean back.
• Pay attention to what your body is saying to the interviewer. Don’t cross your arms or play with your hair.
• When you’re interviewing, act like you want the job.
• Ask for an offer. As how to get an offer, if you aren’t sure of the next steps.
• Ask what the next steps in the process are.
• If you feel like something wasn’t said in the interview, say it. You only have one chance to get to the next step.
• If the interview is over the phone, get clear about how to proceed to the next step in the process.
• Sell your past achievements.
• Sell your past failures as learning experiences, and share what you’ve learned from them.
• Send hand-written thank you notes to everyone you’ve met at the company. They should be simple: “Thank you for meeting with me. I’m looking forward to working with you, and would appreciate any advice you can give me about how to move to the next step. I’m looking for an offer from your company and I’m excited to start soon.” Or “Thank you for meeting with me. I hope we can work together soon. If you have any follow up questions for me, please contact me as soon as possible.”
• Keep in mind that just because you got an interview, you don’t have an offer until you have one. Your goal in an interview should be to get an offer. Period. Even if you don’t want to work there. The interview with the company you don’t want to work for is practice for the company you do want to work for.
• Make it a game called “How do I get a job offer from this company?” and play to win that game.

Hope that helps.

And yes, I’m hiring online advertising or technology sales people based in Austin, Texas. Contact me through my contact form, if you’re interested.

I just made a few changes to the site code to try and shut down the errant postings… The problem is I’m not 100% sure where the postings are coming from, so hopefully, I’ve squashed the bug. If not, I’ll try something different tomorrow.