I recently made a deposit at my local TD BANKNORTH branch. Later that evening a couple of items posted to my account as pending. These items were not fully processed. At midnight my deposit went through and the next day I was slapped with multiple Non-sufficient fund fees. The "pending items" that are actually just temporary holds continued to hold for 2 more days after my deposit was fully credited. The fees actually processed 2 days before the "pending items" even cleared through the account. I was told by the first rep i spoke with that no, it was not right to charge fees on items that may or may not even fully go through your account (or debit purgatory as I like to call it). She sent me to a supervisor who declared that it was a new policy of TD Banknorth to charge customers up to $35 on each "held item" if funds are not immediatly available. The additional explanation was a vague reference to the economy. So basically what checkholders are experiencing with these NEW and CREATIVE means of additional fees is to make up for the bank loaning money to "High Risk" individuals and now those loans and mortgages defaulting. The bank looses money and has to make the void up somewhere. Also that all reps dont have the training they should because it is too costly to invest intraining a rep who may or may not stay with the company. I was in shock! This was a supervisor speaking!
The circumstances broke down as follows:
Day1-Made deposit at 4pm. Deposit more than covers any debits to be processed.By 8 pm 2 items "post" to account in pending
Day2- (midnight) deposit clears.By 4 pm $60 in fees attached to account. 2 items still in pending.
Day3- Account (minus 60 in fees is more than able to cover pending debits)
Day4- Debits finally process and clear.
The scary part is they will assess a fee even if your "pending" items drops off and is never processed by the merchant. A couple of examples of this are"
1. Use your card to purchase, lets say $50 worth of items, and the merchant puts a temp. Hold on $80 to be sure the full amount clears. You have $75 in the bank. You would get charged a fee (to be processed asap before the pending purchase) on the pending $80 which brings you balance down to
-$110. Then the pending amount is dropped by the merchant, but now you only have $45 (not enough to clear your purchase) and the merchant processes the actual original purchase amount of $50.00. Now your checking account is irrevocably -$35 and your total purchase just cost you $50 $60 in fees. And if you have these fees reversed it counts towards your 2 'gratis' reversals and so you better be perfect the other 364 days. 2. You have $100 in the bank and make a purchase totaling $101. You contact the merchant to cancel your order. The pending $101 on your account will not be processed now. Well you will still be charged a 30 or more dollar fee.in this case the bank will tell you to contact the merchant to get your $30 back. How much sense does that make? They never paid out the money< you never went negative but you get charge a fee for non sufficient funds!
wrong, just plain wrong
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