[some-guy]

About five years ago I worked at Wells Fargo as a teller while in college. During that time Congress passed a law prohibiting debit transactions from going through if there weren't enough funds in the account. Shortly after that we were told to start telling our customers about a new service called Debit Card Overdraft Service which was marketed as a "convenience" for customers when they were in a bind.

When I asked my branch manager about this service in person, he said he was told by his manager that the company was going to lose billions of dollars due to the new law and that this service was meant to alleviate those losses. I filed an ethical complaint since I believed that it violated one of their Team Member Codes of Ethics regarding "encouraging reckless financial behavior". It pissed off my manager, which pissed off his boss, and then I had a round table meeting with them. My manager then claimed that he never said anything about losing money, and that the new service was unrelated to the new laws passed in Congress. Since I couldn't prove he said those things I decided to drop it, but he told me I no longer had to advertise the service.

It still irks me that there was absolutely nothing I could do about the situation. After I quit some of my co workers told me that they were told that the service was used to make up for lost revenue also, but they were afraid of speaking up since they didn't want to lose their jobs. I had less to lose because I was a college student studying CS.

[oasisbob]

I was working at a credit union during the same time, and I found the immediate change in rhetoric really disheartening.

Overnight the line for overdrafting your account went from, "You're being financially irresponsible by not properly balancing your account - you deserve the fee" to "Overdraft Protection is like an umbrella - nobody expects it to rain, but if it does it's nice to have protection.

I was shocked at how much fighting there in the industry to carve out transaction types from the opt-in behavior.

[colanderman]

I'm surprised and somewhat disheartened to here that there are credit unions which follow this practice. Doesn't seem to really fit with their charter.

[eru]

I guess the moral of the story is that ethical complaints should be anonymous?

[kelukelugames]

The moral of the story is to gather evidence.

When you go report something to HR, the HR rep always writes things down on paper. Why do they do that? In case things go to court.

Write down on paper what everyone says. Otherwise is your word vs the manager's. Employees will not win in a case of he said she said.

[shard]

How does writing it down make any difference, unless there was a corroborating witness during the conversation? It seems like it would still be he said she said. Is it just a case of writing it down being more unlikely for the memory of the words to be distorted by time passing?

[eru]

For some weird reason, keeping a journal of stuff as its happening (eg your neighbours making noises) seems to hold up better legally than just stating these things verbally.

One theory: I guess because the journal commits you to one story. One consistent story is easy to shoot down, eg your neighbour claims and proves they were on holiday when your journal speaks of lots of noise.

Evidence that is easy to shoot down, but doesn't actually get shot down, is more believable afterwards.

[kelukelugames]

I don't know but it's legal advice I have received.