Charter One Bank - Citizens Bank Citizens Bank Unethical transaction manipulation to genereate outrageous NSF fees, Internet

I had a similar thing happen about 4 years ago as I was preparing to move from OH to CA. Where your situation involved them juggling transactions posting on the same date, mine actually involves the posting of a transaction being backdated from a Monday to the previous Friday.

I had overdrawn my account on a Friday and went in with a cash deposit on Saturday to cover the overdraft amount and fee, plus an additional amount to cover some transactions I had planned for the weekend. I had a transaction still pending as of when I left the branch that Saturday; and I left with a reciept showing an actual balance of $52 and change and an available balance of $33 and change (reduced by the pending transaction).

I spent about $20 over the weekend, against the $33 available balance and when I checked my account on Monday imagine my surprise when I saw that the transaction that had not yet gone through when I was in the branch on Saturday, the same transaction that showed as pending when I checked my account on Sunday, yes, that some one, had gone through on Friday. Another $35 overdraft fee for that, and one more for each of the 3 transactions I did over that weekend. $140 in fees for literally no reason other than the branch manager knew I was moving 2400 miles away from his branch (2000 miles from the nearest branch, actually) and he could get away with manipulating the records.

I spent my last week in Ohio trying to get it resolved. I went to four different branches with both the reciept showing my post-deposit balance from Saturday and the account ledger printed *at the branch* showing that the transaction in question had not processed as of Saturday, looking for an explanation of how it now appeared to have processed on Friday and, failing that, a refund of the overdraft fees. I recieved no explanation or refund.

So I said screw it, I'll have another account with another bank in CA before this becomes an issue (and I did) and walked away from it. 3 months later, I recieved a call from Citizens Bank (they own Charter One) recovery department regarding the account. I recanted the story to the lady on the phone, who was almost helpful. She provided me a reference number and her direct phone number, to provide to the branch manager when I went in to speak with him.

Wait. What?

I explained that the nearest branch was 2000 miels from me and that the cost of airfare was far in excess of the amount in question. She claimed to understand what I was talking about, but when I asked if this could be handled via mail or fax, she said it was not possible; I had to come in to a branch. At least she was able to tell me that the record for the transaction in question had been modified the Monday after the authorization posted; her explanation was that typically the processing system will modify the transaction when it posts, but the timestamp on this modification did not match the posting time, so it had to have been manually edited.

Bingo.

My response was something along the lines of "So you admit that the records your looking at agree with my assessment of the situation, and that the records do reflect a modification time on the morning of the Monday after the authorization posted?" "Yes." "You admit that these overdraft fees should not be on my account and that I should have a positive balance somewhere around $13?" "I would have to calculate that, but yes, your balance should be positive." "Good, enjoy the $13, keep the account out of collections and off of ChexSystems, and let's just agree to disagree regarding the requirement that I set foot in a branch to resolve this." She agreed that my porposal was reasonable, given the situation, and added a note to the account, since she couldn't actually prevent either of those things.

The account did end up in ChexSystems; I contacted them for an audit and two things were done as a result. A) The account was removed from ChexSystems and B) Citizens Bank, any bank they ever own, and any bank that ever buys them, are all barred from listing any account in my name with ChexSystems, ever.

The account also went to collections. The first collector did review the account notes before attempting to collect and didn't put it on my credit report. When I refused to pay it, they said they understood; 3 months later, I heard from collector #2. They likewise had reviewed the notes, didn't report it, but also thought they could collect. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Eventually, the account hit a collector who didn't bother with the account details. I learned of them when it showed up on my Equifax report, and I gave them a call. After I explained the situation, they not only reviewed the notes, but contacted Charter One for a detaield copy of my account history. After reviewing that, I got a letter from them, informing me that they had (and they did!) removed the debt from my credit report, would cease any further attempt to collect, and would retain the account for the remainder of the statute of limitations. I called when I got the letter, because I was thoroughly confused by a debt collector behaving in such a pro-consumer manner, and was informed that they have seen more than a handful of these cases from Charter One and that they intended to invoice them purchace price, administrative, and storage (all those paper records) fees for each and every one of them once they could no longer be collected.

Beautiful. I sincerely hope they follow through.

in the consumer comments section at Ripoff Report #502469.

We small people can choose to take it or begin to tackle this in the political arena. This is one source to make your situation known and the more people that file reports the better the prospect of getting the politicians to recognize that there IS a problem. So one things that you can do is please file a complaint with the following government agency:

http://www.ftc.gov/reports/index.htm