Good Afternoon,
I would like to make you aware of an issue I am having with our Girl Scout Troop account. In December, when preparing our Troop Finance Report, I noticed that there were monthly $35 fees being charged. I went into the bank on January 7th to discuss closing the account because we cannot afford those monthly fees. I spoke with Dominic Gray who said the Fifth Third changed all checking accounts to Business Elite in October. Our account should have been designated as non-profit and not changed. Both of these are mistakes that Fifth Third made as we never asked for our account type to be changed. Dominic stated that Fifth Third doesn't have the necessary non-profit documents on file and I need to get them. I received the documents and went to the Fifth Third branch on Hamilton Road on February 12th to give them to Mr. Gray. He was not there. Ms. Cheryl Taylor was in her office and never attempted to help. She passed me off to 'The New Guy'. He was not in his office but I was left to wait for him. He never came back and finally, after quite some time, Ms. Taylor asked what I needed. I explained the situation. She only checked to see if the fees where reversed and said they had been. She told me 'The New Guy' would handle the documents and the rest. He still never came back to his desk but, instead of helping me, Ms. Taylor went to look for him. When she couldn't find him, instead of stepping in and helping me, I was told to email the non-profit documents to her. I waited to confirm she received the email and she verified that she had and appeared to open the documents. She then told me she would give them to Mr. Gray.
On February 19th, I went in to the Fifth Third branch on Main Street in New Albany. I spoke with Jana Sullinger. She said that she would speak with her Regional Manager to get this resolved. She said that nothing has been refunded past the original $50 that Mr. Gray was supposed to refund. This means that what Ms. Taylor said was not accurate. Ms. Sullinger also mentioned that Mr. Gray no longer works at Fifth Third so I am not sure if the documents were reviewed or simply deleted. I was supposed to hear from the Regional Manager this week but I am still waiting. I did stop by the Main Street branch today (February 26th) and spoke with Tracy Lewis. She was unable to do anything but said she would let Ms. Sullinger and the Regional Manager know of the situation. I attempted to send the non-profit documents to her as well. Although Ms. Lewis was able to receive the email, the documents were not coming through as attachments.
I did not close the account back in January because I thought it would get fixed and we would not continue to be charged fees and, hopefully, we would have gotten refunded since this was Fifth Third's mistake. For a Girl Scout Troop, the remaining $100 in fees that Fifth Third cannot or will not resolve is the majority cost of an activity that we can no longer do like the horseback riding trip the girls wanted to take this Spring. It is also the difference between being able to pay for the gas for our camping trips, making trips affordable so each girl can attend, or even being able to feed the girls when we go on these trips. I cannot even reserve our spot at the Mall Lock In at the end of March because Girl Scout Council wants Troop transactions separate from personal funds so I cannot use my private card while waiting to get this fixed and I cannot use the Troop bank card because the account is screwed up.
We do not have an income outside of cookie sales for which we only get 70 cents per box and the Fall Product Sale which yields about the same. These girls have been selling cookies this season but now, I have to tell them to push harder because our bank is draining our account. It is sad this has taken this long and there is NO end in sight. It is even worse that nobody at Fifth Third cares how this is impacting girls that use these outings to hang out with friends and build relationships. I would have closed the account back in January to prevent continued fees but each Fifth Third employee that I spoke with made it sound like they would work to resolve the problem to only find out it hasn't been. read more
