After seeing the many horror stories on this website about banks charging unsuspecting consumers NSF fees, it has happened to me right when my bank, Unizan Bank, was purchased by Huntington Bank.
Unizan processed transactions in a real-time system and also processed transactions throughout the day. Any debits or credits showed immediately plus any check that was going to go through would show one day before processing.
Huntington still uses the traditional nightly processing but they put a kink in their checking account agreement that any checkcard transactions (credit or debit) would hold to a pending account status and those transactions could cause your account NSF fees.
So, your account register on the statement could show you had plenty of money to cover the clearing transactions but it would show NSF fees because you had pending authorizations. I think, no big deal, I rarely had any NSF fees when I was with Unizan Bank.
Well, I've discovered two instances where Huntington manipulates your checking acount to maximize fee generation:
Beware using your checkcard to make hotel reservations. You are charged (shows up in the pending status) for the whole stay plus extra, then when you checkout, the hotel puts ANOTHER authorization on your checkcard leaving a lot lower balance, then your account is subject to NSF fees even though you know (and the hotel knows) that the first authorization is bogus. Huntington makes no distinction in authorizations or cleared checkcard transactions.
According to Huntington, they "put aside" the money because they have no way to know whether the authorization is valid. Fine, but why charge NSF fees? Why not wait (as Unizan did) for the transaction to clear (post or drop-off) before assessing if there is a potential NSF situation?
The second instance is when you return something to store you bought on a checkcard. Huntington waits up to five days and sometimes ten before crediting your account! (Unizan was instant, posted the next business day) Now wait a second, I swipe my card to buy something, and that counts right away, but I return something, and swipe my card, I have to wait five days? Needless to say, many NSF fees were tacked on for that situation.
Huntington uses the nuances in Reg CC to maximize fee generation. No, I did not open an account with Huntington, they bought my bank. And yes, I read my account disclosures but who knows how a bank operates until you see it firsthand.
Huntington is what it is; it's not right, but they make tons of money on fees and that's what shareholders like. I advise any former Unizan customer (some have already fled) to leave while you have a chance and to anyone else: stay away from this bank!
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