In response, the customer service representative told me the following:

• The fee for withdrawing currency from an ATM in Israel is 2%.
• The fee for exchanging currency at a bank branch is waived because I am a “Citizens Gold” customer, so this is cheaper than using an ATM in Israel.

Unfortunately all of this is incorrect:

• The fee for withdrawing currency from an ATM in Israel is actually 3%, not 2%.
• While the “exchange fee” is indeed waived for Citizens Gold customers, the bank charges a hidden fee by marking up the exchange rate by around 10%, so in fact exchanging currency at a bank branch costs 7% more, and is thus 233% more expensive, than using an ATM.

Relying on the misinformation, we exchanged $3,200 worth of sheqels. In addition, based on the misinformation that the ATM fee was 2%, we made thousands of dollars in ATM withdrawals for purchases in Israel which would have been cheaper if we had used our credit card (3% fee – 1% cash back = 2% net cost). In total, the wrong information provided to us by Citizens Bank’s customer service department cost us a little over $300 in unnecessary fees.

Aside from the telephone customer service representative, I dealt with several tellers at the branch where I did the exchanges. I mentioned to them that I was exchanging a lot of cash in Boston because I was told that it was the cheapest way to get sheqels from dollars. None of them felt it appropriate to point out that using an ATM in Israel would be cheaper.

When I discovered that I had been ripped off on the exchanges done in Boston, I sent a letter to the branch manager demanding a refund of the excess fees. He never responded.

When I later discovered that I had been misinformed about the ATM fee as well, I sent a second letter, this one to Stephen Woods, the Massachusetts President of Citizens Bank, demanding a refund of all the unnecessary fees. I also informed him that the bank’s failure to correctly disclose fees constituted unfair and deceptive trade practices under M.G.L. Chapter 93a, and that my letter to him constituted a 30-day demand letter, after which, if my complaints were not addressed, I would file suit against Citizens Bank not only for the unnecessary fees, but for triple damages as permitted under Chapter 93a.

Let me take a brief intermission in the story to remind readers of the cardinal rule of good customer service:

Mistakes happen. It’s how you deal with them that distinguishes you from everybody else.

Citizens Bank was already treading on thin ice because of the branch manager’s failure to respond to my first letter. Nevertheless, a frank admission of error and prompt refund of the disputed fees at this point could still have wiped the slate clean and left me feeling like the errors really were unintentional and the bank felt remorse.

I’m sure it will not surprise you to hear that this is not what I got.

About six weeks after I sent my letter, I received a response from an “Executive Services Senior Advocate” at Citizens Bank. She said that the bank hadn’t done anything wrong. She said that it was impossible for a customer service representative to tell me the cheapest way to get sheqels out of my bank account. And she said that since I was apparently upset about having been charged fees at all for currency withdrawals in Israel, she had “as a courtesy” refunded all of the ATM fees (which was about half of the refund amount I had asked for).

I sent Ms. Advocate a second letter in which I explained that (a) she had apparently conflated my two complaints and misunderstood both of them, since I was not upset about the ATM fees per se, but rather about the fact that I was charged more than I was told I would be; (b) it is ridiculous to claim that a Citizens Bank customer service representative is incapable of telling me that 3% is cheaper than 10%; and (c) if Citizens Bank didn’t refund the rest of the fees, I would sue, and there was little doubt that I would be awarded triple damages.

Ms. Advocate then sent me a second letter, in which she acknowledged that I had been misinformed about the ATM fee (wonder of wonders! an admission of error!) and then reiterated in more detail her fantastic explanation of why the customer service representative did nothing wrong when she claimed that exchanges in Boston would be cheaper than ATM withdrawals:

“As I mentioned in my previous response, our employees would not have knowledge of what method of conversion of a particular foreign country’s currency would be least expensive for our customers since there are numerous currencies and exchange rates of these currencies that may vary daily and other financial institutions may or may not have additional fees that you would be subject to. It is the customer’s responsibility to conduct transactions that they feel are in their best interest. Our employees do not function as financial advisors nor in a fiduciary capacity and thus are not responsible for ensuring that your voluntary transactions are the most financially advantageous.

“At Citizens Bank, our rates typically cover the costs associated with handling foreign exchange transactions on behalf of our customers while maintaining a competitive market pricing structure. We periodically survey the foreign exchange market in our foot print and find that our exchange rate are indeed competitive with other institutions and exchange houses for like transactions.”

In other words, “We mark up the exchange rate as much as we can get away with, and we think it’s perfectly reasonable for our telephone customer service representatives to fail to disclose this when explicitly asked to compare the cost of in-person exchanges vs. ATM withdrawals. Oh, and by the way, our lawyers wrote these two paragraphs.”

Ms. Advocate is obviously correct that there are other factors to consider, e.g., fluctuating exchange rates and ATM fees charged by local banks in foreign countries. However, the fact that these other factors exist by no means eliminates the obligation for Citizens Bank to accurately disclose the ones under its control. To suggest otherwise is patently absurd.

Ms. Advocate then informed me that the bank had refunded (again “as a courtesy”) the rest of the money I had demanded, but that, “The credits that have been applied to your account should not be construed as an admission of any wrongdoing or error on the part of Citizens Bank.”

In other words, “What we did is sleazy, but we don’t want to admit it, and we also don’t want it to end up in court where a judge might order us to disclose to customers that we mark up the exchange rate, so we’re going to pay you off.”

If we wished to give them the benefit of the doubt, we might hypothesize that if the bank were to admit an obligation to disclose their exchange rate mark-up, it would open then up to a class-action lawsuit on behalf of everyone who has ever done a currency exchange there. The only problem with this hypothesis is that I did not complain of a failure to disclose to anyone who walks in the door, but rather of failing to disclose to someone who specifically requested disclosure, which they are surely obligated to do.

If I thought the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office might actually do something about stuff like this, I’d file a complaint with them. As it is, because this is the last (and worst) in a series of bad experiences with Citizens Bank, we have decided to move our accounts to another bank as soon as possible.

January 22, 2010

Ray Ciccolo
Village Automotive Group
75 North Beacon Street
Allston, MA 02134-1912

Dear Mr. Ciccolo,

Once again, I find myself sending you a M.G.L. Chapter 93a letter because of Honda Village’s deceptive trade practices.

In June 2009, Honda Village started sending me promotional materials in envelopes that look like this:

[image elided; see my previous blog posting]

I am not going to waste my time explaining why this is clearly intended to deceive the recipient about the source, importance, and content of these mailings. I know this is so; you know this is so; the methods of deception and intent to deceive are obvious. I’m quite certain that a judge will agree.

I received a number of these mailings before I finally decided to ask you to stop sending them. On October 15, I sent a message through the contact form on your Web site which read as follows:

(Do not add my email address to any bulk email lists as a result of this submission. I am providing you with my email address only so that you can respond to this request. NO OTHER USE OF MY EMAIL ADDRESS IS AUTHORIZED.)

(Do not add my postal mailing address to any direct-marketing lists as a result of this submission. I am providing you with my postal address only so that you can remove me from your direct-marketing list as described below. NO OTHER USE OF MY POSTAL ADDRESS IS AUTHORIZED.)

For months now, you have been sending me junk mail in envelopes that you have intentionally designed to deceive recipients. You’ve made them look like some sort of official certified or registered mail, and you’ve intentionally left your company name and return address off of the envelopes. These envelopes are clearly designed to get people to open them, when they would just throw them in the trash if it was obvious they were from you.

This kind of deceptive direct-mail advertising is exceedingly slimy. It is distressing to me that I purchased a vehicle from a company that employs such slimy tactics. You have proven to me, unfortunately not for the first time, that my initial impression, that you were different from all the other slimy car dealers out there, was wrong.

Whatever mailing list I am on to be sent these slimy mailings — please get me off of it. Right now. And leave me off of it. Permanently.

Honda Village did not have the courtesy to reply. Furthermore, since I sent the message quoted above, I have received at least two more of these offensive mailings, the most recent one today.

If you had stopped sending these when I asked you to stop, I would have left it at that. But since you didn’t, I have decided to teach you a lesson not only about not sending junk mail to people who have asked you to stop, but also about engaging in deceptive trade practices.

Chapter 93a stipulates that individuals may sue businesses which engage in deceptive trade practices for the greater of actual damages or $25. The law further stipulates that double or even triple damages shall be awarded for willful violations and/or when the violator refuses to grant relief. Finally, the law stipulates that a claim for damages may be made by the plaintiff for each separate violation.

At first glance, $25, may not seem like a lot. However, I have documented at least four such mailings, which increases the damages to $100. Given that your attempt to deceive is clearly willful, and that you failed to grant relief by stopping the mailings when I asked you to, triple damages are warranted, i.e., $300. And of course there’s also the filing fee.

But wait, there’s more. Chapter 93a (Section 9) also has this to say:

(2) Any persons entitled to bring such action may, if the use or employment of the unfair or deceptive act or practice has caused similar injury to numerous other persons similarly situated and if the court finds in a preliminary hearing that he adequately and fairly represents such other persons, bring the action on behalf of himself and such other similarly injured and situated persons; the court shall require that notice of such action be given to unnamed petitioners in the most effective practicable manner.

In other words, I can and will argue, if you force me to take you to court, that every single recipient of these mailings is entitled to $25 in damages, tripled to $75, for every single one of the mailings they received. That will obviously bump the case out of Small Claims Court and into Superior Court. That’s fine with me, since I have no doubt that I’ll be able to find a class-action lawyer willing to take the case on contingency.

How much do you reckon it’ll cost you to defend against this lawsuit, even if by some miracle you are successful?

As required by Chapter 93a, here are my demands for an acceptable settlement to this matter:

1. You will pay me $200 (two hundred dollars), i.e., double the minimum damages to which I am entitled under Chapter 93a, as compensation for the time I’ve spent publicizing and trying to stop your deceptive practices. This is a fair compromise to save us both the trouble of going to court, where I would surely be awarded triple damages.
2. You will permanently cease and desist from sending promotional postal and electronic mailings of any sort to my wife or me.
3. You will agree in writing that any future promotional mailing sent by you to my wife or me will ipso facto cause us undue emotional distress, and that you will pay damages to us in the amount of $500 (five hundred dollars) for each such mailing.
4. While not admitting fault, you will agree in writing to permanently cease and desist from sending promotional mailings, to anyone (i.e., not merely to my wife and me), that are designed to deceive the recipient as to their contents. Furthermore, you will agree to always identify Honda Village or Village Automotive Group by name on the outside of all future promotional mailings.
5. You will agree in writing that any future promotional mailings from you which do not identify Honda Village or Village Automotive Group by name on the outside shall ipso facto constitute a deceptive trade practice under Chapter 93a.
6. You will agree in writing to allow me to publish your response to this letter, including but not limited to the commitments enumerated in the previous two paragraphs, on my blog.

As required by Chapter 93a, I will await your response for 30 days from the date of this letter before initiating legal action.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Kamens

My new Canon PIXMA MP830 multifunction printer (copy / scan / fax / print) arrived yesterday. I set it up this morning and gave it a whirl. The six photos I printed were all perfect: good colors, fine detail, and no sign of streaking due to misfiring ink jets.

I showed them to my wife, who declared that the prints from the C5280 were better. I’m not sure what planet she is living on, but at least I have a better understanding of why HP has been able to sell the poor C5280 to so many people and convince them that they were getting good photo prints out of it.

The one complaint I have about the MP830, at least so far, is that it is significantly bigger than the C5280. On the other hand, the MP830 has several significant features that the C5280 does not, including two-sided scanning and printing and a built-in fax machine (which we are not using fight now, but probably will eventually). Another big advantage of the MP830 is that it has separate ink tanks for each color, which means that you don’t end up wasting two colors of ink in a tri-color cartridge when the third color runs out.

Today, I received a FedEx from HP with not four labels, or even three labels, but just one label, and of course no check.

I just sent this email:

Ms. [elided],

Not only did I not receive four FedEx labels to enable me to send back all three printers and a box containing the photo paper and ink cartridges I don’t want, I actually received via FedEx today only one FedEx label, and no check.

To be clear: I will not consider this matter resolved and notify the court that the small claims case can be dismissed until (a) I’ve received a check for $600 from HP, and (b) I’ve received EITHER three FedEx labels to send back the printers and a written assurance from you that you don’t want the paper and cartridges returned, OR four FedEx labels so that I can send back the paper, cartridges, and printers.

Thank you,

  Jonathan Kamens

It’s amazing that they can’t even lose properly.

Shortly after filing the suit, I faxed a copy of the filing to my HP case manager.

On May 22, someone from HP called to discuss the filing. My wife told her to send me email, which she did. I did not have time to call her back or respond to her email before today.

She called me again today, June 4. She said she wanted to try to resolve the matter without going to court, and I said I would love to do that. I told her that the only reason I ended up filing suit was because my case manager had refused to send FedEx to pick up the printers and supplies, which would have cost HP only $16 more than they had already agreed to spend to buy back the printers.

She agreed immediately to refund the approximately $400 I’d paid for the printer, supplies, and small claims filing fee, and to send FedEx to pick up all the boxes from my house.

I told her I appreciated the offer, and although it would have been good enough before I’d been forced to file suit against HP, it was no longer sufficient. I told her she was going to have to offer me some compensation for the ten hours I’d wasted on this problem, and that if it went to court, I’d be able to easily prove false advertising and win triple damages.

She offered me another $200, and I accepted.

Here’s the email I received from her a few minutes later:

Dear Mr. Kamens:

Hewlett Packard values each of its customer relationships. It is unfortunate that you have had a less than satisfactory experience concerning HP’s equipment.

HP is pleased that we have been able to resolve the issue that has arisen concerning your HP equipment in a way that is acceptable to us both. Specifically, HP has agreed to a settlement of $600.00. You in turn have agreed to return three HP Photosmart C5280 printers (Fed Ex labels will be sent to you) and accept this remedy in full satisfaction of any claim you might have and have agreed to release HP from further responsibility relating to this problem without the need for you or HP to determine whether HP is at fault. HP does not make any admission of liability concerning this matter but values your business and wishes to retain you as a customer.

You agree to dismiss with prejudice the above-captioned complaint and agree that this document constitutes a full release to the above-captioned lawsuit or any other lawsuit or action based on the transaction described in this letter.

If this letter does not accurately reflect your understanding of the resolution of this matter, please contact us immediately at elided or email elided@hp.com so that we may resolve any misunderstanding. If this letter accurately reflects our agreement, please respond with your agreement or sign and return a copy of this letter via fax or US mail.

Again, we are pleased that we could help you resolve this problem, and we hope that you will continue to be a satisfied HP customer.

Very truly yours,

elided
Executive Customer Relations Group

Now we just have to wait and see if the FedEx labels and $600 check show up.