This is specif­i­cal­ly di­rect­ed to cus­tomers of Re­pub­lic Bank who have cur­rent ac­counts and re­ceive month­ly state­ments. How­ev­er, oth­er banks' cus­tomers should take note too. Over the last few months, on pe­rus­ing my month­ly state­ment, I no­ticed sev­er­al deb­it charges of 25 cents each. I did not in­quire the first time, but when I saw even more in the fol­low­ing state­ment, I called cus­tomer ser­vice.

To my ab­solute amaze­ment, I was in­formed that every Re­pub­lic cus­tomer who reg­is­tered a Linx or cheque trans­ac­tion with any mer­chant who did not bank with Re-pub­lic, would be deb­it­ed this charge. These charges would be in ad­di­tion to the usu­al month­ly ser­vice charges.

I im­me­di­ate­ly in­quired how the bank ex­pect­ed me, the buy­er, to know where my pro­posed mer­chant did his/her bank­ing busi­ness. Fur­ther, even if I had thought to ask, it would be none of my busi­ness. Did the pow­ers-that-be at Re-pub­lic Bank con­duct a sur­vey in or­der to de­ter­mine how cus­tomers felt about this ad­di­tion­al charge when, as I of­ten say to them, their al­ready high ser­vice charges fail mis­er­ably to even come close to the stan­dard of ser­vice that such costs would dic­tate?

This is ab­solute­ly out­ra­geous, Re­pub­lic Bank. You are way out of line to pe­nalise me and so many oth­ers be­cause your of­ten in­dif­fer­ent stan­dards of ser­vice do not at­tract dis­cern­ing mer­chants. You would be much bet­ter served if you as­signed your mar­ket­ing de­part­ment to find out why more mer­chants did not bank with you.

In the mean­time, I sug­gest that you im­me­di­ate­ly re­fund me and all those oth­er cus­tomers, sim­i­lar­ly treat­ed, these monies, in full, as sure­ly it must be im­moral to charge oth­ers for your fail­ure to in­duce more busi­ness, if not il­le­gal.

I im­pa­tient­ly await my re­fund.

San­dra Git­tens Scott

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