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SunTrust discriminates against white British woman?
02/19/2012 1:44 PM by John M
via Feb.16-18 issue of the Richmond Free Press
I’m white and I’ve never had a problem there. In fact I’ve found they’re overly nice to me.
Um, I don’t know why the bank would be obliged to change her $100 bill. She’s not an account holder, so there was no transaction which was occurring beyond her needing it changed. She wasn’t tendering the bill to buy anything. This is total BS, she needs to get a life.
prob not…
I’m a young white male, conservative republican looking dude who banks at that branch, and goes there all the time. I’ve dealt with 100% of the all black staff and I usually get a big smile everytime I show up.
Their discrimination is about non-customers, not race.
Suntrust does not provide change service to non-clients. All monies exchanged must be done against a client account number.
She should have opened an account.
As most of the posters above have pointed out, it’s just a case of businesses being shitty and treating anyone who isn’t a customer badly. Why they don’t realize that this makes folks less likely to become a customer one day is beyond me but it’s pretty common practice for businesses (banks especially). That’s part of the reason they need handouts to bail them out.
I wonder how the original ‘Church Hill Bank’ would have handled the same situation.
@Alex–most? I only see one response that’s even slightly leaning towards “SunTrust was shitty” unless John’s deleted a bunch of responses. That the woman even brought up racism is ridiculous. I’m not a SunTrust customer either and I wouldn’t go in there to change a hundred, I’d be better off going to a business. The sense of entitlement people have these days never fails to amaze me.
If anyone has watched NBC12 recently, they have done 2 different stories about people who have received $100 counterfeit bills from Sun Trust branches. Although not required, the banks made each person “whole” by exchanging the fake for a real bill. Perhaps the SunTrust people are just being more cautious about $100 bills. I sure would be if I were a teller.
Could have been dandy if they had just helped a citizen/or non out…don’t ya think.
Wish I had $100 to get changed, then I’d worry about who might change it for me.
That’s my branch, too. And the staff at the branch consistently deliver great service.
However, having banked with SunTrust for over 20 years, and over the years I’ve run up against a handful of surprisingly anti-customer policies. That said, I usually find a way to over come/work around those policies and continue banking with them.
But what really weirds me out about the “we don’t make change” thing is this: when I travel outside Richmond, either domestically or internationally, I routinely rely on banks (where I’m not a customer) to help me out with routine transactions.
I think of all those times I walked into a bank in a foreign country with Amex Travelers Checks (yes some folks still use em) and had them cashed for the local currency.
I can understand a banks interest in protecting itself from fraud, but this latest “we don’t make change” thing seems petty on SunTrust’s part. They participate in the FDIC program…since that’s a federal program, as a citizen/tax payer, I feel justified in calling them out on this issue.
The store I used to work for banked with Suntrust. I had to get my manager to call ahead sometimes or bring proof we had an account with them, just so they would make change for us. That was in Chesterfield, but seems like a company policy. Maybe she had more reason to think it was racism, but if it was just as she said, that is completely idiotic and reckless to claim racism just because she was a different race than the teller.
I think this woman’s reaction reveals some of her own personal issues with race.
I heard the tellers are American ultranationalist zealots who hate the British for their long history of colonial subjugation.
a loan officer dominic smith at suntrust bought a property from me for 87 k and and refinanced it for 397k code violations still exist and it and the other repos of his have been sitting for years and now sun trust has been forclosed on by fannie may !
I have heard of other people having the exact same issue with other banks, in other locations. It seems to be a bank policy, albeit a crappy one. Has anyone interviewed Suntrust to learn their policy?
Suntrust hates everyone equally but it is policy all Suntrust branches I am aware of.