Termites eating away at your money
By wickedangel
@wickedangel (1636)
Dominican Republic
April 7, 2008 10:04am CST
Can you imagine you put your hard earned life savings into a bank vault (currency notes as well as investment papers) and find out that termites have attacked them and that all is left is dust!!!!!
This is what happened to an Indian trader. He is understandably devastated by this. He now has no life savings. The bank said that they had put a notice up in the branch in May 2007 stating that people should remove anything that was paper based but hadn't contacted the individuals directly to let them know that they had a problem with termites. He said that he didn't see the notice in time because he hadn't visited the bank for a long time. He had put his savings there because he wanted to keep them away from his wife and children as his relationship with him was strained.
You can view the story by clicking on the link here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7334033.stm (I've had to type it out so I hope I got it right!)
The bank says it is not liable for the destruction of his life savings as they were inside the deposit box and the box itself was not damaged! So he is not entitled to any compensaton.
What are your thoughts on this? What would you do if you were in this position?
1 person likes this
1 response
@icyorchid (2564)
• United States
7 Apr 08
LOL I would sue!
It is my understanding that if the bank is robbed your money is to be covered, so I see no difference with termites.
I would think the bank would have informed everyone by phone of the problem. This is a huge problem.
When I had a problem with my bank account when I had one, NO one called me and I had lots of bounced checks! All due to the banks fault!
I was reimbursed all the fees for this. They sent a check that I had direct deposited to my acct, cleared it with the bank mgr and they returned the check because it was my hubby's check, and his name was not on the acct at the time, but they let my daughter's check go through, and her name was not on the acct either.
That is why I got reimbursed! The checks were from the IRS.
I no longer have a bank account, because of some other problems, they are not worth it to me.
1 person likes this
@wickedangel (1636)
• Dominican Republic
10 Apr 08
Thanks for responding icy. Yeah, not so sure if this bank had telephone numbers for all their clients as it was in India and I don't know how many of them have phones. However, they could have written to each person individually or at least contacted them in some way. I agree it is up to the bank reimburse the lost money. I suppose though they don't know how much is in the deposit box and so this could be a great opportunity for the individuals to say that they had more than they really did. Banks are there only to make money for themselves and they just don't care about the individual. Sorry to hear about your story but it shows that this is in fact true!
