Last week Mr. Crunchy had bank problems (with “Fweet” as he called them, to escape their google radar) and this week I’m in a blind fury over some of the practices at, uh, BlankNorf (not as catchy as Fweet, but you get the idea).
I am SO DONE with this bank. When it takes 3 days for a CASH DEPOSIT to clear, folks, there’s a big honking huge problem. Here is the situation:
1. I stand in line at a branch after work on Friday and deposit $420 CASH into an account. Cash. As in not a check.
2. When I ask if it is available in the account, she said “Not until the next business day if a check comes through, but if you want to withdraw it from an ATM it will be there.”
3. Another bank tries to do an EFT for car payment on Saturday. Saturday, a day when all the branches are open. Heck, our branch is open on Sunday. You’d figure Saturday is a business day, given that they’re OPEN FOR BUSINESS. And given that most other banks consider Saturday a business day.
4. EFT request “bounces”. Bank charges the account $26 for NSF and $16 for a failed electronic transfer. That’s $42 because they refuse to acknowlege that they took $420 CASH out of my hands on Friday. It’s sitting in the account, but just not “available” yet. And then of course there will be fees from the bank with the car loan because they couldn’t get the payment.
(Note: They did refund the fees when pressed, and when we went high enough up the food chain to complain.)
Someone is going to have to explain to me why this blatent consumer rip-off is allowed to occur. Cash deposits shouldn’t take three days to clear. And if they aren’t going to process deposits on Saturday and Sunday, they shouldn’t process withdrawals on Saturday and Sunday. Period. You can’t do one and not the other, people.
I contacted the state Banking Commission to complain about this shady practice, but they told me I had to contact the federal Comptroller of the Currency because that bank is Nationally chartered, not state chartered.
When approached about this this morning, the bank claimed they are “only following FDIC rules”. Uh huh.
Can I give a shout out to my cousin John, the Chief Operating Officer of the FDIC? Yo John, I know you’ve read my site in the past, but if you happen to see this one, could you drop me an email? I’d like to talk to you about how my bank is using FDIC regulations to steal money from the accountholders on a regular basis. Maybe it’s time to revisit the rule and how it applies to cash deposits made on a Friday night. You can just email jody at bigdumptruck.com.
Whew. Thanks for letting me get this off my chest. And yes, I’m going to be getting a new account over the weekend, somewhere where they actually consider Saturday a business day.
