I live in Texas and have been with my bank for 4 years. In that time I had about 8 NSF fees until this month when a mistake with my online payment service usps.com posted my mortgage payment twice. I work many late nights and the money was available to cover them when they hit. Since I was not aware of this I also sent payments out the following week for other bills. I use checks for most things as a way of easily tracking what I spend on what/where. Then due to the almost $500 variance from the mistake 7 checks bounced, which overdraft covered 5 of them. This entire time I had been attempting to get my online banking account unlocked to download my quicken as I do every few days. Now I go to the bank, they clearly see it was not MY fault, nor do they consider it their fault. They told me if the online billing service refunded one of the mortgage payments they would credit the NSF charges. I also knew I had a few checks not cleared (at this time 5 had NSF). I had arrived at the bank to discuss this with her around 2:30 and after a lengthy discussion I made a deposit to get positive and enough to cover the checks coming. She assured me they would not send them back, she watched me make the deposit from her desk and only saw 1 check trying to clear that day. I leave and called the mortgage company and after a very long call arranged to make a 2 hour one way trip on a work day (no pay) to bring them a cashiers check since they had already posted it for the next months mortgage, then they would let the online billing service take it back without going crazy on me. I called the bank and told them and now the lady said "Now I cant guarantee we will refund them". I said I would REALLY like to know before I loose pay and make a trip for absolutely NOTHING. She said she would send it to a higher officer and call me back. Now he calls me and leaves a voicemail saying they will refund no NSF fees at all. Now on Monday I look at my account online and they didnt put my CASH deposit in Friday because it was slightly after 3pm from talking to her so long. Not only that, they charge me an NSF fee for the check she saw AND sent it back. Obviously I was very unhappy since I had made such an effort to at least get current to avoid further charges. So I am out of town all day Tuesday, call and leave a message for him and receive no call back. Tuesday night late I spent hours looking over it all and now discovered they had been charging me for a year for their online payment service, which I NEVER agreed to pay for EVER and NEVER used it once in that year. $4.95 a month, thanks to downloading Quicken I didnt notice this small variance and everything balanced. I call about that and said cancel it and I will come discuss this and credits etc. Now I have contacted both places the returned checks are going to, they make arrangements with their banks (neither of them are my bank) and both banks agree if I come down and handle it cash they wont charge their customer and they agreed not to charge me due to the circumstances. My online billing service doesnt want to admit fault by finally agrees to pay $75 (max they allow per the agree I signed up for). So finally I go down yesterday and the officer who took over isnt there, and again today he is gone. They tell me this time until Monday. The original lady said she can no longer discuss my account with me. Now I am VERY pissed off at this point, 2 other banks that I have NO relationship too waived fees, 2 businesses did as wel. The online payment service even agreed to pay back $75. I sit at this moment and my bank wont refund a single NSF fee. This bank is sending a very simple message, screw the customer as long as we get our money, who cares whose fault it is, long as it isnt ours we will take your money. I will go see him monday for one more plea, to maybe convince him it might not be the normal thing to do, but it is the right thing to do. I will also fight to get a refund on all charges for their online banking and then make them balance NSFs on checks that wouldve cleared if it hadnt been charged. I would love to hear your input/advice on how I can convince these cold hearted, ruthless people to be nicer and do something nice for a customer who isnt a fault. Also any advice on how to approach my refund on those online billing fees.

Thanks for hanging in there

The best way I have found to handle a complex situation as the one you have described is to sit down and write a bullet-pointed list in chronological order as to what happened. If you have copies of any correspondence from your on-line bill pay service and/or mortgage lender, that woudl also help clarify the situation.

Most importantly, your written account should be factual without any emotional overtones. At the end of the listing of events, you can summarize the situation and then state your complaint - i.e. Banks that do not have accounts with you are willing to refund fees, the Online service is willing to refund fees, and you would hope to see some sort of reasonable consideration from the bank where you have had an account for 4 years.

In addition, you can also copy the regulator for the your bank. If it is a state chartered institution, you may also be able to write to the state regulatory agency. Easiest way to find out who the regulator is, believe it or not, is to ask the bank.

Bonnie has given you excellent advice. I would only add that your letter to the Bank should be addressed to the President/CEO of the Bank you are dealing with, not to a branch manger or area supervisor. You should indicate at the bottom of the letter that you have copied the institution's regulators. My experience with complaint letters is that the ones that are sent to the President and the ones that are copied to the regulators, receive the most attention and the fastest resolution.
I hope this issue is resolved to your satisfaction.
Leslie

I agree completely with both Bonnie and Leslie. Also, be comforted that if you do forward anything to the regulator, the bank will surely address your issues ASAP. I wish you well in this endeavor.

Why didn't you have the bank reverse the second ACH entry as a double post? Why do you maintain your account with a bank that doesn't know you and is not very convenient? The bank has no responsibility in this matter, e.g. to reverse NSF charges – believe it or not there are costs for handling NSF checks. There are a few holes in your story!

When I'm in the right, I've also found that a copy to the local newspaper and TV station helps.

First, make sure you are in the right and that your story makes sense. Only write to the newspaper if you are in a real big town.

Whoa!

If the customer is right, the fees need to be adjusted. A letter to an officer should do it. Copy the regulators if you want, but it seems to me that they just go back to the bank and ask for a copy of the response.

But don't bring the press in yet. They often don't get all the facts (just ask Al Miller), and a nice soundbite on the news can do a lot of harm to the reputation of what might be an honest bank. And, as Grist notes, there might be another side to this story.

In reply to:

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a mistake with my online payment service usps.com posted my mortgage payment twice

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What caused the payment to go twice?

If a user input error occurred, the bank wasn't wrong. It could be nice and refund fees but is under no obligation to. The bank isn't "bad" just because it doesn't want to refund fees which were contracted for.

If the vendor made a mistake and ran entries twice, they should make the customer whole either directly with the customer or through the bank where the heart of the relationship may exist. And if it was the vendors fault, let the bank know you are unhappy with the vendor.

My question is, who was at fault?

Thanks for chiming in on this, Andy. The bank appears to be one step removed from any responsibility with the customer basically victimized by the vendor, not the bank.

Why some posters would have this poster contact regulators, newspapers, etc. is way off the mark.

I believe the problem the original poster had with the bank wasn't so much that they wouldn't refund the NSF fee but rather that they said they would and then changed their mind. That's what I'd have a problem with.

We don't know for certain, but I don't see that the bank made the error. I believe the customer may have, but in any case realizes how expensive this can be and wants to go to the deeper pocket. I believe that is a normal reaction.

The bank may be under pressure to reduce fee waivers, as an example. But it needs to evaluate how valuable the relationship is. Similarly, the customer should decide with his/her wallet where they want to bank and why. Is it a free account that saves them money in the long run? Has the bank waived other fees?

There could be many sides here we don't know about. The simplistic side of me just wants to know where the error was and to try and make it right from that point.

If an officer of the bank had originally stated a willingness to waive fees if the customer completed a specified performance, and then the bank later renegged on that after the customer complied, that type of behavior needs to be pointed out somewhere.

What the Bank should have told their customer was to go back to the vendor that created the problem. But by making promises in exchange for certain behavior by the customer, they have basically jerked the customer around.

Now a SMART (and authorized) Customer Service Rep would have said to the customer "Okay, we will waive the fees this time, but we will not waive fees for any future problems created by your vendor. By the way, how much are you paying for that service? And what kind of assurances are you getting that this will not happen again? You know that ABC Bank has OnLine Bill Pay service for only $xxx, and we would have been able to immediately correct any type of problem like the one you have just experienced."

Never fails to amaze me how banks throw away most sales opportunities.

that type of behavior needs to be pointed out somewhere.

But not to regulators or the newspaper. This customer should get over it a get with another bank.

As far as sales are concerned, that should not amaze you as that's the norm in banking.

I agree with the sentiment that the bank's biggest fault here is saying one thing and doing another. I have seen this happen in a number of mid sized and larger banks, and it usually comes down to those fee income goals. The branch staff knows the customer and they want to help out, but someone looking over their shoulder doesn't want to see any fees waived, and they put the brakes on it. From the original post, it looks like this particular bank has a few extra layers of management- and the real shame of it is that the consumer has little hope of actually talking to someone who can make a decision. I apologize if I offend anyone with my comments, but as a community banker, I think our strength is the fact that nobody is out of reach of the customer.

I find it hard to enter an opinion on this issue on what the correct action to take would be without hearing what the bank had to say about the chain of events. It's easy to get way too emotionally about a situation until you hear both sides. I do think the first step is to put the complaint in writing to the president of the bank. Getting the regulators involved is only appropriate if the bank violated some law or regulation - which I don't see any evidence. The regulators aren't there to make sure banks don't act like jerks - they are there to protect the depositors and the banking system. The newspapers won't touch this - it's just one disgruntled customer - unless you approach on of the "free" weekly underground newspapers that make a living out of examples like this. Just one man's opinion.

That's why Community Banks will always be able to compete with mid to big banks. The original post issue is common, e.g. the bank was right but wrong at the more human level - that's the way it is and, frankly, it's real good for our business!

My sentiments exactly Grist... right, but wrong. The rep should have set down with the customer and offered to help and explain the appropriate course of action. And, based on the timing of the incident, I don't know how they could have guaranteed the customer the NSF item that day would be paid if it had already been marked for return. In my experience changes that late in the day are almost impossible. Also, given the circumstances, they should have explained to the customer the present deposit would not be posted same day. However, if the story is true in its entirety, the customer should accept some responsibility for not carefully reviewing statements for the unauthorized charges in question (on-line billing) and should not fault the bank for another vendors error.

The customer also has learned another valuable lesson... always read contracts before signing. They are morally entitled to refunds for charges incurred from the OBP vendors error, but not contractually, which was self admitted.

To quote my CEO's comment from a recent opportuinty we had to review the level of service provided a customer:

"Seems like we may have done the thing right rather than doing the right thing."

As Bonnie mentioned, this may have also been a missed sales opportunity. By the way, Bonnie, why did you not suggest that the letter to the bank be addressed to the Compliance Officer? "Those people" usually handle complaints quite well.

Grist, I work for a community bank and I think that you are right on the money (no pun intended). Although the bank could have handled the situation better, the customer needs to take his share of the responsibility here. As harsh as this may sound, pay attention to what you are doing. You need to understand exactly what you're committing to when you sign on the dotted line. If you don't, you're setting yourself up for a loss.

The one "marketing" advantage that Banks have over many other service providers ("marketing" being a somewhat perverse way of looking at this - but bear with me...) is that we have regulators who, for the most part, really do care about our customers AND have been known to act if a situation becomes egregious.

Think about it - how many times has a company really ticked you off, or j-erked you around, and about the only thing you can do is send a "strongly worded letter" to the President. Or perhaps you might try sending a complaint to the Better Business Bureau or Federal Trade Commission. Good look on getting a response. Perhaps the BBB might, but what can they really do about it?

Banks should realize that, having a regulatory shoulder for customers to cry on is an advantage we have over most of our competitors.

If the complaint doesn't hold water, the regulators aren't going to bring the hammer down on the bank. I had a customer complain to our regulator because she couldn't properly work the tubes at the drive-up. Another customer complained because one of our Customer Service Managers put a stop to his kite.

The regulators did not bust our chops over these complaints.

However, customers with a legit beef do feel better if they can bring their complaint to a higher authority.

Bonnie, your comments are right on. We have had few letters to the regulators over some action that we have taken and none of them came down on the bank. Generally, there has been a misunderstanding or the customer never contacted the bank prior to writing the regulator.

One letter does stick out in my mind though. A customer that frequently overdrew his account then called the bank and cussed everyone out about the OD fees. Management discussed the situation and decided to close his account and sent him a goodbye letter with a check for the balance. The letter "invited him to seek other financial opportunities for his needs". It also stated that we were closing his account because of his abusive behavior toward our employees. When we got our letter from the regulator, he had stated that we were required by law to serve his checking needs. We simply sent our regulator a copy of the original letter to the customer and a cover letter that more thoroughly explained the situation. End of issue.