September 19, 2012

Issue with my Bank

Bank
Money has been a not of an issue for me this month, mostly with regards to timing.  I was able to deposit $800 Friday through a check scan at the UPS Store.  I've had problems with my bank's mobile app for scanning and depositing checks, so I walked down to the store to use their system.

I'm used to their being a minor hold on checks, but not for six whole days!  I have bills to pay, so I paid them.  I wasn't counting on missing a significant portion of my deposit for just shy of a week.

No problem, or so I thought, I'll ask my wife to transfer the amount being held to my account and I'll transfer it back when the withheld funds are released.  I went online to check my account and that check hadn't hit yet.

This morning I go to check my account and I come to find that the transfer didn't take place until this morning and according to the bank I got a Non-Sufficient Funds fee of $29 because the one check was presented on Monday.

Now I realize this might not be clear, but let me break it down.  On Monday I didn't have enough money in my account to cover a large check I had written because the bank held a lot of funds back.  The bank hit me with a $29 fee on Wednesday, but they back-dated it to Tuesday.  When I was looking at my account on Tuesday night, none of this activity was there, but it was Wednesday morning.

While I'll take responsibility for being premature on paying a bill, I'm not a big fan of my bank taking action on Wednesday for something that happened on Monday and then back-dating the transaction.  To further compound things when I call my bank to inquire I'm told that my deposit was held for a number of factors, a primary factor being my length of time as a customer and also because I deposited the check after 8 PM CDT.

I had to call BS because a) I've been a customer for over 20 years now and b) I deposited the check around 5:30 PM CDT.  Heck, the place I went to closes at 7 PM CDT.

I was on the phone with the bank for over an hour trying to figure out what the hell was going on.  It ended up that the first banker I spoke to got my check deposit and the transfer from my wife confused and was feeding me a mixture of confusion and absurdity.  I ended that call frustrated and started  over again with a supervisor.

I wanted to know why a transfer between one account and another with the same bank takes 12 hours to process.  Of course none of this mattered because the bank had already decided I was going to pay a fee, they just didn't want to tell me until after the fact.

After a long discussion with a rather nice banker, I learn that a lot of the bank and forth transactions the bank does occurs between Midnight and 5 AM....the next day.  Fine, but why design a computer system that lies to your customers, or worse yet appear to be transparent when it is anything but.  If there is a pending charge, let your customers know.  If you aren't going to transfer their money until the next day, let them know.

I'm hoping they will at least address the problem and just do a better job communicating to their clients.

1 comment:

sirkerry said...

sounds typical for a bank, just one of the many reasons I use credit unions instead of banks these days