A Greensboro-based blogger named Jay Ovittore wrote a post about the policy at SunTrust Bank to immediately debit a transaction yet hold a refund for several days.  The policy came to his attention when a store clerk mistakenly overcharged a transaction and then immediately refunded it.  Since the refund didn’t kick in right away several other transactions caused him to overdraw his account and rack up over $200 in overdraft fees.

What’s interesting to me is that Jay got 10 comments on his post, and all of them were recommendations for other banks and credit unions.  SunTrust did eventually make things right and it’s not like they’re the only bank with this policy, but they now have their competitors being promoted at their expense on a blog post that will eventually pick up search engine traffic, and at least locally it has stirred up a little noise.  (It’s the network effect in action).  SunTrust is a big institution, so my question is do they know about this and if they do know about it do they care?  Somehow I doubt it, because if they did they would have a representative posting a comment in their own defense.

Should SunTrust care?  Sure they should, because even in the offline world one disgruntled customer typically tells their friends and colleagues when they get bad service and they also tell those friends and colleagues when a company does something extraordinary to make up for it. Conversely, customers rarely tell anyone when they get adequate or even good service which generally makes them a silent majority. Right now SunTrust has a disgruntled soon-to-be-ex-customer that offers them an opportunity to get out a positive message about their company and they’re missing it.