OK, so I have been with BB&T ever since they were originally the small F&M Bank, and up until the last year or so I was happy with the service, because we had enough money going into the account and I probably did not monitor my account as much as I should have. However, my wife lost her job in January when the company she worked for went bankrupt. Since then we have had to watch the account very carefully. I did this through BB&T's online service, understanding that the account was updated every 24 hours.
We started having problems in May. As usual, I paid all the bills through the online service and gave my wife the total amount of dollars we estimated to be left over in the account, which should have been $285.00 based on the actual balance and then the available balance combined with pending transactions. My estimate should have been correct. On June the 2nd I checked my balance and pending transactions, and my available balance was $485.00 with nothing showing as pending on the account. I assumed that I had miscalculated and we had an additional $200 unaccounted for, so my wife went to Walmart and bought some groceries for a little under $200.00. The next day I checked the account again and found that I was overdrawn. The $200 pending transaction that was no longer showing in the account the previous day had suddenly posted overnight, and we were now overdrawn by $200. They charged me $75 for the two transactions that had taken me overdrawn.
I assumed that this had been an error on my behalf until Thursday the 21st of August, when I checked my account again. My overall balance was $59.95, but my available balance was only $10.95. I was not worried, because my wife had since found a job, and although it paid considerably less than she was accustomed to making, we were getting by, and she was due to get paid on the 23rd. I called my wife and told her not to make any more transactions because we were close to being overdrawn. There was a pending transaction for $48.25 from Bare Essentials, a makeup pack she orders every 6 months for her job.
The following day, Friday the 22nd, I again checked my balance. It was now showing as a little over $59.00, which surprised me, and when I checked the pending transactions, the Bare Essentials transaction was no longer showing and had not posted to my account. I called my wife again and informed her that we had more money in the account than we thought, again! I said that I needed to get gas and refill my EZ Pass toll card for my journey home, so I spent $20 on my EZ Pass toll card and $21.00 on gas.
On Saturday the 23rd my wife gave me what she wanted me to put in the bank that morning, and as I was already online I checked the balance again, only to find out we were now $10.95 overdrawn and that they were going to charge me $70.00 for the two previous transactions, making me officially $99.00 overdrawn in my account.
I called BB&T customer service, and of course they have no knowledge of the situation. Their records only show that I made two transactions against an available balance of $10.95, which is a complete lie. If I had not called my wife to inform her that the balance had changed the day before, I would have had a very difficult time explaining and proving to her that they had made an error and not me.
In my opinion, they are deliberately manipulating my account, and possibly others, to make it look like I have more money in the account than I actually do, anticipating that I will need the cash for something. That makes the account overdrawn and lets them charge the $35.00 they charge per item that takes me over my actual available balance. It was only when this incident happened that I remembered the first time it happened in May.
Today is Tuesday the 26th, and I have still not heard from the bank manager, so I sent an email requesting that they contact me to resolve the problem and give them an opportunity to explain their business practices before I make an official complaint to the FDIC.
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