Fool us twice?

While I’ve got better stuff to do with my life than call giant unaccountable corporations and get lost in their user-unfriendly maze of rerecorded promptings and customer “service” voice mail dead-ends  asking me to leave messages, I was so annoyed by the post Glenn Reynolds linked earlier that it’s what I wasted at least a half an hour doing.

Because, reading stuff like this just fries me:

McMillan Fiberglass Stocks, McMillan Firearms Manufacturing, McMillan Group International have been collectively banking with Bank of America for 12 years. Today Mr. Ray Fox, Senior Vice President, Market Manager, Business Banking, Global Commercial Banking came to my office. He scheduled the meeting as an “account analysis” meeting in order to evaluate the two lines of credit we have with them. He spent 5 minutes talking about how McMillan has changed in the last 5 years and have become more of a firearms manufacturer than a supplier of accessories.
At this point I interrupted him and asked “Can I possible save you some time so that you don’t waste your breath? What you are going to tell me is that because we are in the firearms manufacturing business you no longer what my business.”
“That is correct” he says.

The post provided contact information,

Martha Dominguez, Executive Customer Relations Specialist: 714-792-4264

Corporate Headquarters: 704-386-5972 / 704-386-5681
Operator: 800-900-9000 (press 0 twice)

Corporate Headquarters (Bank of America):
Bank of America Corporate Center
100 North Tryon Street
Charlotte, North Carolina 28255

So I thought I would take a few minutes of my time to call and ask them whether the above is true, and if so, whether in fact that constitutes corporate policy. I started with Ms. Dominguez, and I got a silly recorded voice mail announcement. That’s how you specialize in customer relations? So I figured I might get some actual human somewhere if I started with 800-900-9000. I pressed 0 twice over and over again and finally I got someone who said he was with home loans and knew nothing about anything. He transferred me to another equally clueless person, who asked me what loan program I was calling about. I kept explaining over and over again that I only wanted to find out whether the story that is all over the Internet is true, and if so, whether it is company policy. No one knew, although at one point one woman said “We don’t comment on media stories,” while admitting that she could not confirm the story she could not comment on. Finally, I was given a number to call for small business customer relations: 631 425 9319. Again, I left a message, assuming I would never hear back from the gun-grabbing, bank-grabbing bank.

To my surprise, I did get a call back from one “Ann Pace,” who left a message earlier. She stated that while she had heard of the story going around on the Internet, that Bank of America has no policy against firearms dealers: “we absolutely do not have a policy against arms dealers” and that “other arms companies do business with us.”

Assuming that is true, perhaps the problem is with Mr. Ray Fox. I would like to call his office, but he seems to be one of those sly rascals who prove difficult to track down online. I suspect that he is in the Arizona area, though, as he is listed as a member (in 2006, at least) of the Government Finance Officers Association of Arizona:

Ray Fox,Vice President/Credit Products Officer,Bank of America

The same man is also listed as as being one of 22 Technical Review Panel members who are said to be the “heart and soul” of the application process for the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools:

Ray Fox – Vice President, Bank of America

Arizona is a Second Amendment friendly state, is it not? So what’s up with a mover and shaker like that acting this way? If he is in fact the problem, and not his employer, then what is he doing still employed as a Vice President of Bank of America? Does the bank think it’s appropriate for its top executives to engage in retaliatory business practices against customers who are helping citizens exercise a fundamental constitutional right? Hasn’t he at least been made to apologize?

To illustrate how offensive this is, imagine if he told the owner of a newspaper that because they were in the journalism business BofA would no longer do business with them.

I think he’d be fired immediately. The same result should apply here.

It’s not as if this same issue hasn’t come up before with the same company. In 2010, the NRA learned from its members about a BofA policy of denying banking services to businesses associated with firearms:

Fairfax, VA--(Ammoland.com)- Over the past few months, NRA-ILA received information from a few members detailing some problems that firearm-related businesses were having with Bank of America (BoA).

It appeared that BoA had adopted a policy of denying banking services to businesses associated with firearms. ILA staff contacted BoA corporate leadership and asked them to provide specific information regarding their policies.

In a conversation with Douglas K. Bland, a BoA Senior Vice President, NRA-ILA was assured that there was no such anti-gun policy.

Mr. Bland provided NRA-ILA with a written statement of their policy, which states “Bank of America does not have a corporate-wide policy to deny banking services solely on the applicant’s involvement in the firearms industry.”

NRA-ILA is pleased with this statement, but will continue to monitor business activities to ensure that gun owners and gun related business receive fair treatment. If you have had issues with Bank of America, please contact NRA-ILA so additional follow-up can be done. If needed, Mr. Bland has indicated his desire to assist with claims of unfair denial of services for firearms related reasons.

Sounds to me as if they’re saying the same thing now that they did in 2010.

Can their assurances be trusted? Until I see some evidence, call me unconvinced.

UPDATE: As M. Simon noted in a comment, Bob Owens has more on the significance of this incident, especially the importance of MacMillan to national defense, and the deliberate, calculated hostility of Vice President Ray Fox, and BofA’s receipt of over $100 billion in bailout money.

Most significantly, this is the third time this sort of thing has happened:

Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina, is the site of the Democratic Nation Convention in September.

This is at least the third time Bank of America has implemented a discriminatory policy against gun manufacturers. In early 2001, a scandal erupted over the bank’s attempt to discriminate against another Arizona-based company. The resulting public outrage forced a reversal of the policy.

In 2010, Bank of America attempted a similar action, and was again forced to “clarify” their position…

It’s looking like a pattern to me.