I know a lot of people come on here to talk about fees, but this is not the case. Let me say from the beginning that I do not trust banks. I never have, so I use them as little as possible and keep only enough in the account to keep it active so I can pay credit card bills sometimes. Basically, I had $4 in the bank and a credit card bill came in for $34. I went to the bank and put in $36 to make absolutely sure there was enough. I made sure I was there by 2pm because that is the time they told me I had to be there to get it in that day. Before I left, I double checked with the teller, and she told me it was already posted and showing in the account. I went home and checked on the website 20 minutes later, a triple check. Then I paid the bill, which came out automatically. I went back on the bank website to make sure, and the new balance was a few cents over $10. I should have printed that out.
I set the account up in July. When I did, the woman told me about their overdraft protection. She said that in order to have it, we had to open a savings account with them and have $25 automatically transferred on the 29th of each month. That way, if there was an overdraft, it would just be pulled from the savings account and there would be no overdraft fee. We said OK and they set it up. So far, there has normally been about $25 in the checking account every month and they have taken it out, and I just go in afterwards and transfer it back into checking. The woman actually told me this is what most people do. But if there was not $25 in there, it would not be put into savings. There was not $25 in there this month, so it was not taken out.
I checked the account this morning, and now I am in the negative by $53 and some change. I looked and it showed a new list of transactions. Between the deposit and the bill payment is a transfer of $25 to savings. It was not there the day before, but that is not what I have a problem with. With the overdraft protection on my account, the savings and checking were supposed to be linked, so even if they posted things in a different order than the way it was done, it should have just been taken out of the savings with no problem. I called the 24 hour number, and the woman on the phone was rude and talked to me like I was stupid, so I asked for a supervisor. When the supervisor finally came on the phone, I talked to him for maybe a minute and he talked to me the same way. My husband came in the house and asked me what was going on, and I just told him I was closing the account. The supervisor heard that and was practically yelling at me over the phone. So I hung up and went down to the branch to talk to the woman who had set up our account.
I went into the branch and right off she started with the same way of talking. She then told me that the savings account was never linked to the checking for overdraft protection. This is the exact same woman who set up the account a few months before and who told us about the overdraft protection, and she is claiming that we never had them linked. Why on earth would I have $25 taken out of the account every month for overdraft protection if I did not want them linked that way? Basically, the woman never linked it and was claiming that I never asked to have it that way, but I was signed up for the overdraft protection. It makes no sense. So now I am hit with a $35 overdraft fee, but I still have the $25 in my savings that they transferred. The woman actually told me that I should just transfer the $25 back to savings so I would not be so far in the negative. That does not help me at all, because I would still have to pay the $35 overdraft fee.
I have never liked this bank as it is. I am always getting hit with little fees for using their phone line and stupid things like that. The people on the phone line are rude, the people in the branch are rude, and they have been a pain to deal with from the beginning. We have actually been talking about closing the account and going with another bank for the past month or so, but I did not want to deal with the hassle of opening a new account. I guess I should have done it sooner. Now I am definitely closing the account and going with a smaller bank in the area, one that actually cares about personal accounts and not just their big corporate accounts.
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