I’ve seen worse than that. I was a member of a university credit union, which was, for a variety of reasons, a total clusterfuck. My account was okay for several years, but then some major changes happened and all hell broke loose. Cash withdrawals routinely failed to be debited from the account. Checks would get charged twice. Random fees would show up. Things looked good for me, as I had several hundred dollars more in the account than my personal ledger showed, but I didn’t trust them and they were obviously hemorrhaging money.
So I asked them to close the account. When they asked why, I told them straight up that their records showed no correspondence to my checkbook balance and that they were failing to register many transactions. (In all honesty, I must admit that I didn’t specifically say that the transactions they were failing to register were withdrawals or that my account balance was too high, but they didn’t bother asking.) They made out a check for the balance on my account, and I went elsewhere. I kept the excess money for about six months to see if they would claim it, then spent it on groceries (starving college student). Never heard back from them about the excess money.
Three months later, I get a call saying that I bounced several checks. Huh? What checks? I ask. They give me several check numbers that were not in the series of checks I had printed - i.e. the check printers had sent me #1000-#1500, and these bounced checks were #4501, 4502, and 4503. I explain this to them, and tell them that this is fraudulent use and not my checks. They insist that I owe them the bounced check fees. I tell them to call the police, it’s not my problem, and besides, the account is closed. There follows a long discussion on the uses of a signature card, which apparently they had never heard of, and I finally convince them to leave me alone.
A year later, they contact me saying that I bounced another check. What check?, I ask. They tell me, I check my records, and it turns out that this was indeed a check I had written more than a year and a half before. I should have noticed its absence, but my account balance had gotten so screwy that apparently I had missed it. They inform me that I owe them for the overdraft fee and for the value of the check, which they had paid. I’m confused at this point, because at the time that I wrote this check, I always had a large enough balance to cover it, so I should only owe the actual value of the check, which I assumed they had neglected to withdraw from my account. “When did this happen?” I ask. “Yesterday” they say. I respond with “You got a check dated over a year and a half ago on an account that was closed - CLOSED, mind you, not zeroed-out and left dormant - over a year ago, and YOU DECIDED TO PAY IT???”
I told them I was done with them, I never wanted to hear from them again. I would not pay the value of the check because it had long since expired. They could request the money back from the bank they had paid it to - I didn’t care. I would not pay the overdraft fee. The account was closed. There were to be no further transactions on it. I told them if I ever heard from them again or if there was ever any attempt made to collect this money from me, I would submit my account statements, checkbook ledger, reciepts, and testimony to the FDIC and put them out of business.
THAT finally got rid of them.
mischievous