Hello.
Please give us advice about an OD fee by Citizens Bank which we do not think is appropriate. My brother was on a Work And Travel program to Orleans, MA this summer. It was his first year and he opened an account with Citizens Bank. When getting the debit/credit card he was told the purchases appear on the account within 2-3 days.
Even tough it was his first bank acc and in new country, there were no problems working with the account for almost 4 months. Until he left...
Towards the end of his stay, flying from Boston to LA, he paid for a meal at Washington airport (don't know which airport exactly) on Aug 22nd. Taking into account the 2-3 days needed purchases to show up on the account, he did not use his card at all for the last 6 days, to avoid transactions showing up after he had left the USA.
On Aug 28th, his last day of the visit, he went into Citizens Bank branch and took all the remaining money out. At that point he was not warned by anyone that there is a debit card transaction outstanding. And he didn't notice that those few bucks spent for the meal have not shown up anywhere.
By checking his online banking recently, out of curiosity, he noticed that $4 for the meal are charged on Sep 4th, full 2 weeks after the purchase was made. After that immediately on Sep 8th a fee of $39 was also charged.
I spoke to the bank briefly, just explaining the situation without going into account details, and the first reply was that they usually would not cancel the fee. We are hoping to speak to a manager again tomorrow with my brother present as the account holder and to see what they will say.
If we were living in the USA I would say the bank is right, even though the fee is extremely high. But I think this situation is specific, if we were living in the USA the balance in the account would never be so low that $4 take it into OD. He is a foreign student and was not warned of anything when taking all the money out. Why would it take the bank full 2 weeks to put the charge on the account? This fact made all the confusion even with his precaution not to use the card in the final week of the stay.
We would appreciate any advice without lecturing that he should have read the terms in full etc. He is still young (1st year Uni) and was half way across the globe. But even that is not an excuse and none of this would have happened if the bank didn't take 2 weeks to execute the transaction.
Thanks in advance. Best regards.
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