I Hate My Bank SO Much

The BBQ Pit
1

I am pitting my bank, Citizens Bank, for their ridiculous, non-sensical, self-serving policies that left me stranded at the gas station today with no way of paying for the much-needed gas I was there for.

Without even addressing the overdraft “hustle” Citizens has going on regarding checking/debit accounts (which I opted out of), they have caused me enough pain to take my business elsewhere.

I typically keep pretty good track and control of my checking account but recently some unexpected things came up which caused me to bring my balance to basically $0. So I got paid on Friday (I should have had direct deposit but that’s a different issue) and I deposited my check via the ATM on Sat morning.

I know it can take an extra day or two sometimes for an ATM deposit to be cleared, so on Monday (today) morning, before I attempted to use my atm card at all, I called my bank to check on the status of my deposit. I was told they had processed my deposit and they told me my balance. Good, because my car was on empty and I needed gas before I could do anything.

So I get to the gas station (just barely) and try running my card…and it’s declined. Insufficient funds. Hmmm…How could this be happening? I just confirmed that I indeed DID have sufficient funds. I was not happy. I called my bank back to find out what was going on. They told me they didn’t understand why I shouldn’t be able to use my card. After about 20minutes of waiting for them to search their database for the problem, the best I got was "well we see there is some kind of hold on your account and I’m going to forward you to the Corporate Call Center :rolleyes: and they will take care of you.

Well I wait another 10 minutes or so for the Corporate Call Center rep to take my call (all at the pump at the gas station, mind you) and I find out that my “balance” that was quoted to me by the earlier bank employee was NOT in fact my “available balance”. Since I deposited a check (not personal), the bank puts a 1-day “hold” on it before relinquishing the funds to me. I don’t understand this at all. How do I have a “balance” then? That money is there, it’s mine, but it’s not “available”? I wasn’t aware of the semantic jungle-gym that is bank policies. It sure would have been nice to have been told when ASKED, though. :smack: Why would I be calling the fucking bank to inquire about the clearance of a deposit and the sum of my balance, if I didn’t expect it to be AVAILABLE to me?!

So, the Corporate rep says, “well, the best I can do for you is transfer you to a supervisor to see if they can override this.” I said “Ok, please do so.” After waiting another 7-8 minutes, the same rep (not a supervisor) comes back and says “I’ve spoken to my supervisor and he’s said there’s nothing we can do. Nothing at all.”

Wow. Did you REALLY have to add the “nothing at all” part, fucking asshole? So, I told them that they had lost a 12yr client of their bank as I was taking my business elsewhere and hung up. I was stuck at the gas station with no way to get gas because my fucking bank fucked me over for no understandable reason and showed no willingness to reasonably fix the situation with a client who has been with them for more than a decade. GOOD-FUCKING-BYE! :mad:

2

Wow. I use a community bank, and they release $500 immediately while the deposit is pending. I may not have as many “free” ATM’s available, but it’s worth the difference for me. I really dislike the big national chain banks. And I don’t use ATM’s often enough to worry about it.

What did you end up doing? There’s enough gas to get you through one more day, I hope?

Did you mention that it was a payroll check? Some banks will also release funds sooner if they know it’s payroll.

3

Do you have 5th3rd by you (yes it’s a stupid name)?

They piss me off frequently but at least if I bitch they make it right - can’t say the same for the last 3 banks I’ve been with.

4

I finally got ahold of my sister and she (thank jeebus) was nice enough to come up to the gas station and loan me $20.

5

Yeah, why in the world would they settle on such an awful name?? But I believe there are a few I don’t think they are all that close though. I’ll have to find out.

6

So how did you get out of the gas station? Or are you still there?

7

Post #4

8

This was not my experience with Fifth Third.

I finally got tired of their bullshit and switched to a local credit union that I am quite happy with.

9

Well like I said I have to bitch at them quite a bit - not an optimal situation I agree

10

You should have said you were in a wheelchair and play the sympathy card. But big banks usually have no heart so it probably wouldn’t have worked

11

Its the Saturday thing. After close of business Friday, you enter the grey and nebulous zone of Not Monday Yet. Nothing really exists there, because it hasn’t been observed, you deposited Schroedinger’s Check.

They don’t want us anymore, they don’t need us except to fulfill some pesky definition of being a “bank”. Banking is too boring these days, they want to be out in the action! Then, when they lose a buttload, they gotta squeeze you.

It was a bad day when certified public accountants decided they wanted to be lion tamers. It was a worse day when we decided to let them.

12

:stuck_out_tongue: Definitely no good over the phone…

But seriously, I’ve come to learn their is a certain “card” I can play at times in situations to my advantage. It’s not so much a sympathy card, rather a “confusion card” or a “ignorance card”. Now of course, you all well know that I seek to do nothing but eliminate ignorance. However, one thing that I hold in value above my broader fight against ignorance is my personal safety and well-being. By and large, the two things are one and the same; but there are individual instances where taking advantages of these “cards” can and does add to my safety and/or well being. But that’s a different thread…:smiley:

13

Now you are.
Incidentally, Nigerian scamsters take advantage of this. If you deposit a fake check and call the bank a couple of days later, they will tell you that it has cleared. But doesn’t mean it has really cleared – you can still be liable for the funds a couple of weeks later when the check bounces.

So whenever you call your bank to check your funds you have to be really clear about the semantics, get the correspondent’s name, and for Dog’s sake don’t trust that they know what they’re doing. Run through a couple of scenarios with them.

14

Except it’s the exact same check, issued from the exact same company, that I have been depositing (and they have been cashing) there for years. Those fly by night payday-advance stores have ways of verifying a check within minutes, why the fuck does a legitimate FINANCIAL INSTITUTION take multiple days to do the same thing?? And, if “what’s my balance?” is no longer sufficient in detail to properly inquire to a bank as to how much money is there for the client, then time to find a fuckin credit union. Or a big hole in my backyard. :mad:

15

Fifth Third Bank’s history

AFAIK it’s predominantly Cincinnati and adjacent regions.

There is, as far as I can tell, no single bank that is completely nationwide – one available in Cabots Cove, Palatine Settlement, Picketts Corners, Conch Key, Alfalfa Prairie, Wheatville Center, Silver Gulch, Jericho, Longhorn Plains, Santa Carolita, Kealaikahiki, Glacial Falls, and Sunnyvale – though Bank of America has branches in about 40 states. (Not recommending them, just saying they come closest to being nationwide.)

16

Many years ago, I worked in a bank. So sometimes I’m surprised at how many people are ignorant about how bank accounts work.

When you deposit a check in your account, the amount is added to your balance, and starts earning interest immediately. But at the same time, a “hold” is placed on your account in the exact amount of the check. Every bank does this. If it’s a business or government check, the hold will range from two to five days, depending on your bank’s policy. if it’s a personal check, seven days is a pretty standard hold period. The days of the hold are counted only during business days. During this period, that money is frozen in place. Like I said, it’s still earning interest. It’s still your money. It’s just not going anywhere until the hold expires. Note that the hold expiring has absolutely nothing to do with the timetable for the check being cleared by the bank upon which it is drawn.

So the time between a check clearing the bank and the funds from that check becoming available for you to withdraw is normally about 5 business days. Under normal circumstances, if you call the bank and ask your balance, they’ll tell you two numbers: your total balance (the sum of the money in the account) and the “available balance” which is the total balance minus the sum of all current holds.

In the OP’s situation, a check (presumably a business check) was deposited to a basically empty account on a Saturday. So there will be no available funds until probably Thursday. If the OP is an adult, then no matter what the idiot on the phone told him, the OP should have known no money was available. Yes, whoever told him his “current balance” instead of his “available balance” screwed up, but the OP really has himself to blame. Any other bank recommended here will have basically identical policies.

17

My credit union does not place a hold on payroll checks. Personal checks under $500 also don’t get held. And even for amounts over that, they’ll often waive the hold if the check writer is known to them. (I.e., my husband will sometimes write me a large check when we’re transferring money from his bank to my bank, and the credit union doesn’t place holds on those anymore.)

18

Apparently not the credit unions. And again, I am not arguing with the technicalities here. My point is, I’m not often in the position I was in today so I called the bank to see what the status was on my deposit. And I was told one thing and ended up finding out another. I think any reasonable person could sympathize here. Reasonable. Then again, you DID work at a bank. :rolleyes:

19

I know people like to hate them, but I have been very happy with Wells Fargo. I have deposited huge checks, sometimes from obscure banks on the other side of the country, in both my business and personal accounts and had them fully cleared the next business morning, without any holds.

20

It really depends on the bank, these days. They have changed a bit in the last decade as far as what they make available for immediate withdrawal. I think the size of the bank may have something to do with it, too. I can speak for smaller institutions such as MsWhatsit’s credit union and my community bank, which both give $500 immediately available for withdrawal/cash. The account holder does not have to have a balance to cash against the check up to $500 for payroll or in-state checks. My bank will cash a payroll check out even if the account holder’s account balance is zero. It’s not automatic, you have to be with a teller and request it and point out that it’s payroll. The check has to obviously be payroll, like from ADP/Paychex or an electronic check of some kind, not just a hand written businesss check, though.

In-state checks clear the next day (while that $500 was already available), and out-of-state checks are the ones that may take 5 days, though I have yet to see one take longer than two. Banking systems are amazingly slow to upgrade. When I left banking in 2000, we were still filing taxes on big rolls of tape and using a DOS operating system! The banks have to be so very careful and absolutely certain a system they move to will not fail, that they stick for as long as possible with what works. I’m certain that’s why you see retail stores able to automatically debit an account with a check, and hand the cancelled check back to the customer, while banks aren’t there yet. The investment and risk of failure is nominal on the retail level, yet it’s everything at the bank-to-bank level.

International checks have a 10 day hold, for obvious reasons.

So, back to the OP’s concern, wherever you decide to move your money, make sure they make some of a deposit available immediately! I’m not sure if you might have averted disaster by visiting a teller on Saturday instead of using an ATM, for future reference.