Poor Customer Service at Fleet Bank

I've been unhappy with Fleet for a long time; my Bank Bosotn account was sold to Fleet so I didn't actually make the concious decision to go to Fleet. I have a student self service checking account with check card so I can make purchases at stores that accept Visa, etc.

When I went abroad this summer, I used my card to make ATM withrawals in Scotland. When I returned and looked up my balance on their Homelink site, I found an $18 fee. I had no clue what the fee was for so I called customer service. The customer service representative bumbled around on the other end for several minutes, before finally telling me that it was an "activity fee." I asked him what that meant, and he said that I had written over the specified number of free checks in the past month. I don't even have a check book, I explained, to which he responded that ATM withdrawals and debit purchases count towards "writing checks"!!! This sounded outrageous to me, but I'd about made up my mind at that point to cancel my account anyway so I just hung up.

About an hour later my statement for the previous month came in the mail; the $18 fee was my $3 monthly fee, plus $5 for each of 3 ATM transactions I'd made in Scotland (International ATM Network Fee, it said in the book). So while the $5 is exorbitant in my opinion, it was spelled out in the terms and conditions I'd received, however, their customer service reps are completely incompetent and will go so far as to completely outright lie to customers when they don't know the answer!

There's no reason he sholdn't have been able to call up my statement and see what the fee was for! I am closing my account, and I would advise others to do the same!