Okay I havent posted in awhile but here goes. There was a situation yesterday in our office with my branch manager and my husband. Let me bring you up to date on my story. My husband has his own personal account at my bank. He got into a situation where he had an unauthorized debit go thru his account back a couple of weeks ago. It caused an overdraft situation on his account. We followed all the procedures to get the money back and the company did refund it but not before he had accumulated bank charges of around 60 dollars. My branch manager refuses to refund money in any situation like this but yet she will refund money to her friends which I just put thru on Friday over 100 dollars in refunds for two of her friends at the bank. Yet in these circumstances when a customer has their account violated she expects them to go to the company and get back the charges. Anyway my husband went to the branch and proceeded to talk to her about the refund and she told him no. She said to try to get the money back from the company and he said he would have to close his account so it didnt happen again and go on a letter writing campaign to the company. Mind you this was all told to me after my husband left the bank. I had no knowledge of his detailed conversation at the time. Well to make a long story short my manager confronted me in the lobby of the bank and I knew she was upset and told me she had already said that she wasnt going to refund any more charges to my husband and that he was going to write letters. She said this in the presense of two employees and loud enough that they could hear. I asked her why she was telling me this as it was not my account and I had nothing to do with any of it. One of the employees went so far as to ask why I didnt say something to her as she had really embarassed me by discussing personal business in front of other people and actually she shouldnt have been discussing this with me as it was my husbands personal account. Well my husband is very angry and he wrote a letter to both her and our bank president, to whom he sent a copy of the letter, saying how upset he was that she discussed his personal business which was a private conversation between him and the manager, with me and in front of other employees loud enough that they could hear. So if my manager takes me to task for my husbands actions and gets mad enough to fire me or make my work life miserable do I have any options? I am afraid of what she might do. I cant afford to lose my job. BTW, I have never had anything but excellent evaluations from her. I am a little nervous as to how to handle this should she confront me once she gets the letter as I know she will. Any advice will be appreciated.

Your manager actually violated GLBA by discussing your husband's personal account with you.

I saw something similar at my prior bank and we had HR speak with the manager and deliver a warning; remedial Privacy training was also required. In this case, we also offered the affected employee (the one whose business was discussed) a transfer, which she took. (We took a strong stand because of the nature of the private information discussed with others.)

An alternative could be for a privacy reminder to be sent to all branches that employees and their families are customers too, and are protected by GLBA and Reg P. That might get the point across.

If your bank doesn't do anything, the best you can do is calmly tell her that you are not involved in this transaction and wish to stay uninvolved. Continue to act professionally to her and transfer if she begins to treat you differently.

If the situation involved an "unauthorized debit" shouldn't the service charges relevant to the debit and its consequences have been reversed?

You are correct BrendaC.

You are absolutely right. Any unauthorized debit needs any charges reversed. However my manager does not understand this. She assumes that it is up to you to get the money back from the company which is what she told my husband and which is what she tells me to tell customers everytime I deal with this. Yet just that day I reversed almost 100 dollars in NSF fees for two people that were her friends who had made errors in their checkbooks. Go figure. Now this is not to say that she hasnt been nice and reversed charges before for my husband because she has but that is not the case. She discussed this to put it nicely with me in front of two other employees and that is what he is upset about. And my concern is that I had absolutely nothing to do with any of this and yet I am feeling I will reap her wrath and maybe loose my job. My husband did what he thought was right and he was as she should have kept a private conversation between herself and a bank customer about a personal account private.

It just goes to prove that you (or your family) should not bank where you work. You avoid all kinds of issues like this.

Handling of unauthorized debits should be centralized, with a formal process for tracking each report and its resolution, timeframe etc. Besides the privacy violation, the bank has a broken Reg E process. That should be reported to compliance. (I would make them aware of the privacy issue as well.)

If she's violating Reg E and Privacy... well, that's some serious stuff!

I would notify whoever is in charge of compliance... they can put some pressure on her to learn what she obviously does not know.

Then, I'd talk to someone in human resources and fill them in on the situation so far. Hopefully, you won't have to deal with any retaliation, but you may... but let your HR dept. know that you're afraid she may retaliate. Start building your case with them.

Situations like this can get bad enough that it can end up in court... but if everything is like you said, it sounds like the facts are definitely on your side!

Any chance transferring to another branch may help?

I guess I would wonder how committed this Manager and the Bank are to customer service. Clearly making a customer attempt to collect a refund of bank charged fees is not very customer friendly.
It is amazing to me in my career how many managers and supervisors are very rigid on these types of situations.

It also appears that this manager is misusing her position to waive and/or refund fees for her friends. You might want to refer to your employee handbook. It probably states that employees shall not be involved in the transactions of their family, friends, etc. This would also include transaction approvals. And be sure you have your employee evaluations handy to immediately disprove any claims of poor performance, should they arise out of retaliation.