Being someone who has to write their account down to the penny at times I am very vigilant is balancing my account often. I utilized TCF's online banking to help with this. Each time I did I would balance and match what they said I had available in my account which include all pending transactions.
After not looking at my account for just 5 days I logged back in to see that I was now in the negative by $294. Looking at my transaction history I was very confused since I was getting NSF charges when my account was still in the positive (on the last day I had balanced it even)
I immediately contacted TCF's customer service 800 number. The rep on the phone told me that they had to go by what their system said, which was the I was actually in the whole on that date and that is why I received that first NSF fee.
I then waited to receive all the overdraft notices in the bank (total of 4 with multiple transactions on some). Going over those notices I found some interesting practices. First of all unlike a majority of banks TCF held all pending transaction amounts from my available balance and then would apply any clearing items. That first notice informed me that I had overdrawn due to a deposit to clearing before another item. (Ok that doesn't bother it happens, I'll pay that one even though their system differs from the online that said I was in the positive by over $100)
Now sometime at night the bank then released on the amounts of the pending transactions and starts all over. So my account went from $-50 something to $130 something. Then re-charged all pending transactions first, and applied the clearing items last.
These items where those that cleared and already been held from my available balance on the previous notice stating that. The money available in my account had already covered those items. Their own system of doing pending first and the clearing on top of for some reason recycling pending transactions every day is the reason I got charges over $270 in NSF fees.
Naturally I want an explanation of why this is happening, this has to be a software issue to charge those items from my account multiple time. Upon speaking the branch manager at my local bank I come to find out that it is not a mistake. This is how they do things.
What can I do now? Anything?
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