I made a debit card transaction at a major are hospital on a Tuesday morning at 7:15 through a merchant card machine. That transaction was then voided by the hospital at 9:15 that same Tuesday morning at that same merchant machine because they were charges my insurance company was going to cover.
The voided charge was for ~$322 and I had over a $500 balance in that account on that particular morning. I new that it would take at least a day or two to get the ~$322 back into my account but I still had enough over $150 in the account to last a few days.
Compass bank did not release the ~$322 back into my account until Monday, 7 full calendar days after the transaction had been voided and only then because I was in their branch asking why the release was still pending, at which time the bank manager manually released the funds to my account, which would still not post until that night.
During the weekend preceding that Monday, 4 business days after the voided transaction, my wife and I had made a total of 6 transactions that had went over the $175 balance that was in the account because of the ~$322 hold. These were small $10, $15 dollar transactions with only 2 transactions over $35, but the NSF Fees totaled $228.
The bank manager did refund the NSF funds from those transactions on that first day, Monday, when I had gone to the bank to complain. But she did not check to see what other holds were still pending.
The next day, Tuesday one week after the voided transaction, there was a correct balance of ~$135. My wife made 3 debit transactions totaling under $60 on that Tuesday. On Wednesday I woke to find that there was an additional 5 NSF funds in the account.
I again went the bank branch and spoke to the branch manager. She again said she would credit me for the NSF fees but said it should have been the hospitals responsibility and not the banks because it was not their fault* and that this would be the last credits she would place into my account. I also told her I was going to deposit an additional $100 cash just to try to avoid any other bad happenings.
When I awoke the next day, Thursday morning, my account was once again showing a negative balance. The manager had credited my account $304 that she said she would when I was there on Wednesday, but had then debited my account that same $304 by her authorization after I had left the branch. This error turned out to be made by the branch manager herself when she was entering the credits. She apologized for that error on my third visit to the branch on Thursday and had already corrected them due to the fore notice she had received from the corporate office of my impending arrival.
The total amount of transactions that I have made against that account since the first Tuesday that the transaction was subsequently voided was $399.70. $100 dollars less than the $500 balance I had on that same Tuesday and before making the additional $100 deposit.
The total number of NSF Fees they tried to accrue to my account was 15 coming to a total of $570. The total number of transactions that had POSTED through the bank since the day the transaction was voided was 17 and this INCLUDED 2 charges from the day before that Tuesday.
The numbers alone are ludicrous to me. It is implausible to think that a bank would attempt to extort $570 from a customer for the bank's own errors. They had essentially attempted to charge an NSF fee for every transaction I had made since that first Tuesday, when there was still a balance of $150 dollars in the account.
I have been threatening to leave this bank for over 3 years and have never done so. I guess I am just a moron for putting up with their incompetence this long.
*Footnote:
The branch manager had also told me that it was the vendors (hospitals) fault that the funds had not been released because the vendor had to make a manual phone call to their bankcard center and have a person-to-person conversation with one of their representatives to release the hold with a necessary authorization code. She told me this was the procedure during our conversations Monday and Wednesday at least 3 times, but I think it was more than that.
This was a BLATANT LIE from this bank manager made in either ignorance or simply to reject responsibility for the irresponsibly handling of my financial affairs. The Compass Bankcard Center told me that a phone call was only necessary if a hold needed to have an immediate release. Otherwise all holds were released in 3 days or sometimes less from voided transactions.
The vendor (hospital) had never made a call to any bank center before in the history of the women working there to void a transaction. They void many transactions every day and their credit card merchant had instructed them to void transaction in the exact manner in which they had done on this occasion.
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