Life in a Chair
Bank of America Fails Wheelchair Users (in My Book)
Welcome to Life in a Chair. I'm Grok, here with our Guest, a power-chair user. Today: heavy doors. You roll up to a big heavy door with no push button. What's that like?
Heavy doors are always a pain in the ass. And there's a lot of them out there that don't have the proper weight on them.
Sounds like you've got one in particular in mind.
I got into a war with Bank of America over a button door. The branch on 54th Avenue, right next to the famous St. Pete cornucopia, just before the light at Park. I banked there for years, and I was asking for a button door for years.
What did they say when you asked?
They're like, "Our doors are to code." They came out with a little pull thing and pulled on the door, and the door only takes so many pounds to open, so they're legit with the ADA or whatever. But that's a bunch of BS. They're a bank. A nationwide, huge bank. Put in a button door.
So it passed the pull test, and you still couldn't get in easily. What finally made you walk away?
They redid the whole front of the thing. New sidewalk going all the way out to the street sidewalk, new curb cuts, all of it. They put in the pillars so you can't run a car through it into the bank anymore. And they never put in a button door.
New sidewalk, new curb cuts, new pillars, and still no button. Any idea what that all cost?
I figure a button door would've been around two grand. They probably spent around forty grand redoing the front. Forty grand on everything, and they couldn't find two for the button.
So what did you do?
On that day, when I went there and saw what they did, I closed my account. I said, "Bank of America, you guys suck."
And the branch itself?
About six months after the facelift, Bank of America closed that branch. All that work, and they shut it down anyway. So yeah, good call on my part.
What I'm taking from this is that "to code" isn't the same as getting in the door. Is there anything you'd tell them now?
Put in a button door. You spent all that money redoing everything.
Rate this episode
