I used to bank at a community bank. But no longer.
I didn't change my feelings about community banking. I would still love to feel that I am known and important to my bank.
I always used to brag that one day the bank called me and said, "Mr. Nadler, you forgot to sign your check to pay your phone bill. Do you want us to honor it?"
This absent-minded professor was thrilled that they covered for me.
I wrote a column about my 1-cent bank account, developed when an account I was closing had earned one day's interest between the time I tried to close it and when the check cleared.
Most of all, I loved private banking - a section of the bank with people dedicated to handling my needs with speed and accuracy, thereby rewarding me for a pretty hefty balance in each of a number of accounts.
But times have changed.
I do not consider my bank to be a community bank anymore. The more it acquires other institutions and grows, the less it does for the people who made it in the first place.
As politicians would say, let's look at the record.
*My first disenchantment was with the way it handled my discount brokerage account - an account I opened because I trusted the bank, and because its brokerage representative had an office in the building next to my branch.
All of a sudden I get an impersonal note telling me my account has been switched to a distant broker I do not know. Then a "for rent" sign appeared where the brokerage office used to be. No letter - just a notice telling me they have given my account away.
*Next comes a statement stuffer telling me that my "free service" as an over-55 customer will now cost $4 a month.
*Then came a killer. Every other bank tries to get the public to use ATMs, to cut teller time devoted to each account. But my bank started charging $12 extra to have an ATM card.
*As if this were not bad enough, when I went to the regional officer of what they now called our area's "stores" instead of "branches," he said: "Sure, we will give you your $12 back that we charged you for your ATM card."
I know I have written before about being charged for my ATM card. But what happened next is like the joke: "What's worse than finding a worm in your apple? Finding half a worm."
You see, I never got the $12.
Now, I can assure you that $12 will not change my lifestyle. But the failure to deliver on that promise means one of two things: Either this bank's officers no longer have authority, no matter what they say, to make exceptions for large customers; or they tried to budge a too-rigid system but failed.
Neither is a pretty picture for a community bank.
*Then came the last straw. I went to the part of the bank where for a decade my private bank had done business. Sure, there were new faces every month or so - the place was a revolving door - but I was used to that.
This time, though, the person sitting there told me: "Oh, this isn't private banking. That department has been dissolved. Go to the platform and wait for someone to help you."
Wow! The bank proved again that its communication skills leave a lot to be desired.
On top of this, it now pays a whopping 1.35% interest on deposits - after the minimum balance and activity fees have been deducted.
The people I talk to at the bank laugh about this and say, "Well, that's what they offer these days."
Aha. It's a sign of a good bank, I always say, when the employees talk about it as "we." When they call it "they," watch out.
To its staff, my community bank has now gone from a "we bank" to a "they bank."
I have a new name for it, too. For 26 years I affectionately called it "my bank." Now I call it "Them."
Yes, I know that bankers rely on inertia to keep depositors, and you have to insult customers again and again before they catch on and close their accounts.
But maybe more to the point, as I look at what has been happening, is Groucho Marx's famous remark: "I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception."
Mr. Nadler is a contributing editor of the American Banker and professor of finance at the Rutgers University Graduate School of Management.
