Banks continue to burden customers with unnecessary bureaucracy while quietly profiting from practices that raise serious questions about fairness and transparency.
If an account is truly “inactive,” how is it that the bank is still able to access it every month to deduct a $50 service charge? That contradiction alone exposes a system that appears designed to quietly drain dormant accounts.
At the same time, customers are forced to waste hours in branches with limited parking, fewer staff and long waiting times to complete forms that could easily be emailed and filled out at home.
Even the publication of inactive accounts in newspapers seems deliberately misleading, with names listed by first name instead of surname and branch, making it difficult for elderly customers or families of deceased persons to identify them.
In an age where a simple spreadsheet can organise information in seconds, these tactics look less like inefficiency and more like a strategy to frustrate the public while banks continue to collect dormant fees, a practice that deserves far greater scrutiny.
Gordon Laughlin,
Westmoorings
