Huntington Bank - Bad Business, April 2002

My sister had her ATM card stolen with some other items in her card. Being in college, no one was home to sign for the new card, so Huntington suggested that she change her address to the bank address. That way, she could just pick up the card from the bank itself at her convenience. After that time, she didn't use the account as she was moving out of town.

This was fine until a year later when she attempted to open an account at another bank. She was told that she had an outstanding collections account and had to deal with that. They could tell her nothing but that she had to talk to Huntington.

When she returned to Huntington, she was greeted with poor customer service to begin the encounter. She was told that many notices had been sent pertaining to overdraft fees, but no reply was made to the bank.

Remember the address switch mentioned above? The employee quickly disappeared into a cubicle and returned with a stack of mail addressed to my sister with the bank's address, all of it opened. My sister couldn't understand how they could get the letters, open them, and not alert her. Long story short: no deal, my sister was pinned for the cost, and Huntington didn't offer so much as an apology.

First off, it's bad enough to get the imaginary image of a group of employees opening my sister's mail and chuckling about the fees that their bank is receiving from her because no one picked up the phone to call her about the goof. Secondly, I'm not sure about the details of this, but I was under the impression that it was and is a Federal offense to open mail addressed to another person.