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As a result of these and other complaints, many consumers have come to regard bankers as greedy and impersonal. "I was treated rudely by several banks just in the course of having a checking account," says David Ohle of Lawrence, Kans., a writer and former English professor. "I never felt as though I was treated like a human being." Says Robert Wool, co-author of All You Need to Know About Banks: "The large banks are continually presenting themselves as human and warm and understanding. But the truth is that with very few exceptions, if you walk in and look for the same happy faces you saw in the TV ads, they usually aren't there."
When consumers say bankers are cold, they often focus their annoyance on the automatic-teller machine. Ironically, bankers installed the 24-hour ATMs partly for the benefit of customers, who have long complained about the inconvenience of bankers' hours. Banks, of course, also put in ATMS because they hope to save money on them once the technology is perfected. The number of ATMs in the U.S. has grown from 1,935 a decade ago to 48,118 at the end of last year.
Developing and safeguarding the machines has been no easy job. ATMs have been bombed by thieves, defaced by vandals and, in one incident in New York City, filled with glue. "You can't establish a relationship with a machine," says Joanne Slaight, general counsel of the New York Public Interest Research Group. "An ATM can't be a pillar of the community." New York's Citicorp made a public relations gaffe last year when it tried to force customers with less than $5,000 in their accounts to use an ATM rather than a human teller. The bank scrapped the plan after a storm of very human protests.
Some bankers have attempted to give ATMs a little of the traditional banking qualities that experts call the "warm and friendlies." One bank in New Jersey put a Santa Claus costume on its ATM during the Christmas season and a heart on it for Valentine's Day. In response, customers have put get-well cards in its deposit slot when the machine breaks down. Customers have improved the image of ATMs by using them as a place to meet new friends. Singles equipped with plastic cards and flashing smiles sometimes pick up dates as well as cash while in line at their neighborhood ATM.
Turning a warmer shoulder to consumers might help banks and their image. But they face a much more difficult problem: what to do about bad loans. The troubles go back to the early 1970s when the banks, flush with deposits from oil-producing countries and bent on growth, began to take on high-risk borrowers and tended, as Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker put it, "to push money out the door as fast as possible." Some of the biggest of the bad loans were extended to Latin American countries (see box), but many were made at home.
In such states as Iowa and Kansas, bankers are