Huckleberries Online

Hall: Competence Of Cookie Banks

Posted by DFO

March 2, 2009 3:20 p.m. • 11 comments

I think it was when the big national bank lost my mother that I first began to realize I would be better off doing business with a small local bank. The recent blizzard of incompetence atop today’s biggest banks has made me happier than ever to be doing my banking with people who live in the same town. For one thing, they have more civilized ways of bribing me as a customer. Oh, like the big banks, the people at my small local bank try to buy my affection. The big banks throw lavish Las Vegas parties for potential customers. The small local bank does something similar, though on a smaller scale. Several times a year, it gives cookies to me and to its other customers. And sometimes they have dishes of candy. If you don’t take more than a couple of pieces they won’t slap your fingers/Bill Hall, Lewiston Tribune. More here.

Question: Do you bank at a big institution or a local one? Does it make a difference?

11 comments on this post so far. Add yours!

hmoffsuite on March 02 at 4:08 p.m.
A bank is a business too! I like support locally owned banks just like Ace Hardware or Huddy’s.
JeanC on March 02 at 4:40 p.m.
We had been banking at a local institution, but the credit union has screwed up our account too many times to count, so we are switching to a Pacific Northwest bank in hopes of better service.
JIMMYMAC on March 02 at 6:50 p.m.
Bank at one? I work at one. I know where Bill was going with the Vegas reference, and no, it was not a customer trip.
Stickman on March 02 at 7:17 p.m.
It makes no difference. If you have nothing, you don’t feel for the ones that do.
hhuseland on March 02 at 8:45 p.m.
I left a large national bank several years ago when Idaho Independent bank opened up. My account number is in the low 2000’s. When I needed some help getting around an old IRS lien and re-establishing myself, a vice-president took me under her wing, but then her Mom Was Coeur d’Alene activist, Dixie. Any time I pop in, even if it’s been a year, she calls me by my first name. That’s the way it always used to be before the mega-mergers. Now, when I want something, I get it close to right now. No sending the application up the line to corporate. Just hiring good people that can make value judgments without the help of corporate wienies that have never met the customer.
Escapee on March 02 at 9:22 p.m.
I’ve been with USBank for a long time now and I’m happy with every facet of their operation that I’ve experienced. Whether using their 800-number, or online banking, or banking in person, they’ve really been very, very good.

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About this blog

D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.