National City Bank Predatory Banking Practices LaGrange Illinois

National City preys on people who don't have a lot of money:

Problem #1: When I use my check card, it takes anywhere from 7 days to 2 months to post online. One time I wanted to go out for pizza, my online statement showed that I had an AVAILABLE balance $175.00, and I had not used my check card for quite some time before this so I trusted that was the actual amount of money that was available to me. However, to my surprise the next day, I look online and see that I am suddenly negative $234.00. Somehow, overnight, literally 14 transactions appeared on my checking account from MONTHS ago and I was charged $34.00 for each of them, including the pizza (I would love to know how I was charged for that since when I bought it, I wasn't in the negative). They were purchases that I had since forgotten about and being that I am busy with school I sometimes to not keep track of some of my purchases. This wasn't the first time I thought I had enough money for something and then suddenly the next day a bunch of transactions from God knows how long ago appear on my online statement.

National City's Explanation: The amount of time it takes for something to post online depends on the merchant.

Why that explanation is a load of crap: I go to Wendy's often (I'm a fan of the baconator), it's one of the only things I do that I can keep good track of. When I had National City, it would take anywhere from 2-4 weeks for Wendy's to post online. If that lag time is the merchants fault, then tell me why now that I have Chase, that it shows up INSTANTLY on my online statement?

I know exactly why there is a lag time with National City. They purposely hold back debit/check card transactions on the accounts of people like me who don't have a lot of money and who occassionally have only a few dollars in their checking accounts. When the balance runs down, then they post all the the previous transactions all at once to drive you into the negative and charge outrageous overdraft fee's.

After coming to this conclusion, I closed my checking account with them. However a MONTH later I recieved a letter in the mail claiming that I owed National City another $243.00 in overdraft fee's. Apparently, a $3.00 Duncan Donuts transaction came through, re-opened my account, and accumulated $241 dollars in overdraft charges over the course of the past month. I didn't receive any letter in the mail about this until a month later, I told them that was unacceptable, I talked to the manager and I made her call her boss. All they did for me was take off the initial $34.00 overdraft charge. That didn't help me really, I was still trying to recover from the last time they screwed me over and I literally had $0 dollars available to me. Luckily I have amazing family and friends who were more than willing to help me out with this, but if I didn't I would be dealing with a collection agency over this right now.

I asked them, why that Duncan Donuts transaction took so long to post that I forgot about it. The manager called somebody and found out exactly when I made that transaction and then gave me no explanation. However, I think the fact that she was able to find out exactly when I went to Duncan Donuts but I can't look online and find out myself. So the information IS AVAILABLE, just not to me. It goes to proove what I said earlier about National City PURPOSELY holding back transactions. I close my account, my balance was zero, and WHAM, a $3.00 transaction magically appears out of nowhere.

I have paid well over $2,000.00 in charges to this bank and if anyone knows of a way I can go after National City for it, please email me at (((redacted))). Thanks.

Matt
Brookfield, Illinois
U.S.A.

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