Dear Sir,

I write to express my disgust with the lack of customer focus of Bermuda’s banks, and in particular at this moment with the sheer disrespect that Butterfield Bank is showing its customers.

As of January 4, Butterfield has implemented various new fees for its customer accounts, mostly by stealth. These include fees for “account monitoring” for commercial accounts to the tune of $8 per month per account (in addition to any monthly maintenance fees that might be charged); a “statement imaging fee” on personal accounts for (as was explained to me by a Butterfield Call Centre representative this morning, February 1) the service of uploading a PDF statement, which the customer may retrieve online; and a 25 cents per transaction “bill payment fee” for online bill payments, notwithstanding that the bank already charges the receiving merchant a fee for the same transaction. The statement imaging fee appears to merely cancel out the savings the bank promised customers by selecting online instead of paper statements.

I am told by Butterfield that these fee changes were posted in its branches (places where banks generally don’t want their customers to visit), and on their website (if you know where to look).

I’m not sure who frequently visits the bank’s website randomly to search for fees, which may be changing in the future. However, I would wager that the list of people who do that is quite short.

It seems that advance notice of new fees was not posted either on the bank’s Butterfield Online electronic banking portal (where a large number of customers would interact with the bank on a regular basis), or as a notice on bank account statements.

In short, it seems that notices were posted only in the locations least likely for them to be seen by a great many customers. Logic states that one would take such approach only if trying to avoid a customer’s notice. Shame on Butterfield for that.

No one likes fee increases, but sometimes they are necessary. However, any organisation that truly cares about customer service and transparency would make a serious effort to notify its customers of necessary fee changes, and offer some explanation to customers as to why fee increases are necessary (or how the customer may be receiving additional value in return). It does not appear to me that Butterfield Bank has chosen to take that approach.

That’s not how a company wins business and certainly not how it generates customer goodwill or retains customers. Butterfield owes an apology and an explanation to its customers, and frankly, deserves to lose customers over its conduct.

Sincerely, JASON BENEVIDES, Paget