National City Bank Overdraft Fee Overload Cincinatti Ohio

I rented a bike in San Francisco and the company asked for a card to hold. Not thinking, I gave them my bank check card. It turns out the company placed a hold on my account for $700. This took my available balance in to the negative. I was a little upset by this because it meant I didn't have access to the remaining funds in my account. I used to work for the bank in the call center, so I thought I knew the overdraft policy. I expected the hold to drop after a day or two, and all the pending charges to simply post against the ledger balance without any fees. However, the next day I was assessed 7 overdraft charges of $34 each. I immediately called National City and the representative immediately began berating me and blaming me for the whole issue. She claimed that National City's policy had always been to assess overdraft charges for items that posted with a negative available balance (despite having a positive ledger balance). I knew this was a lie, but I gave up trying to deal with this employee. I later confirmed with a friend who works for PNC (National City is a part of PNC) who confirmed that the bank had recently changed their policy without adequately notifying customers.

After the initial 7 fees, my account was depleted which cause multiple pending items to overdraw my account. In total I had $125 in actual transactions, yet $408 in fees. That's more than 3 times the items I actual spent. Meanwhile the hold had been removed. Looking at my statement it appears that these fees just came out of the blue. I wrote a letter to my bank after not being able to catch a branch manager, and in the reply the bank refused to refund a single fee, saying it was not a bank error. On top of that they assured me that they value me as a customer. Yeah, right. Needless to say I will be closing my account as soon as possible.

Nc_ripoff
Ann Arbor, Michigan
U.S.A.