PNC Bank Online banking ,I have no complaints with the local branch. Problems are all with decisions made remotely. Continuing pattern of NSF fraud Internet

I was actually responding to a post that stated that a depost caused a false debit which resulted in NSF fees. I had that scenario happen multiple times in the past, but not in the last two years. The scenario would be that upon depositing a check, PNC would post both a positive entry for the check, and a negative entry until the check cleared, but if the check did not clear within three days (?) the positive side of the deposit would be removed from the "pending deposits" while the negative side would remain, causing the false illusion of an overdraft situation which caused PNC to charge NSF fees. I was never successful in getting PNC to admit their error, however the negative post disappeared after complaining, resulting in a monthly statement that showed NSF fees while never showing a negative balance. 

I estimate 30% of my past statements have NSF fees that never caused my statement to show a negative balance, or NSF fees that caused my statement to show a negative balance that was less than the NSF fee. I also have cases of multiple NSF fees on statements that never added up to a negative daily balance. I have kept records of these strange statements since 2005, when the bank name was National City, but the pattern of NSF abuse has been consistent for over ten years. 

One cause for these invisible overdrafts I discovered recently, has been purchasing gasoline in $10 or $20 amounts, which is my usual pattern, but the gas station puts a $125 hold on the account for each transaction, and I get NSF charges that no one can explain, but the bank personnel always swear there "was" an overdraft condition at the time. I am sure that I have been defrauded of thousands of dollars in false NSF fees, and hundreds more due to PNC's dishonest practice of charging highest amounts first, to maximize the number of possible NSF fees, when the actual sequence of transactions would not have actually caused any overdraft, after fictional debits that were never charged disappeared.

My current problem today, which caused me to find this Ripoff Website has to do with interaction between NIPSCO (our local power company) and PNC. I am disabled with a brain injury. I have set up all of my payments online because I am not capable of managing my business consistently. A few of the large bills I pay manually, so that I can juggle the timing of payments. I have no income, and have had no income for the last 35 months, but I finally received a favorable judgement on appeal of my Social Security Disability application. I have been turned down for every form of assistance I have applied for, because I had received a partial car insurance settlement for my brain injury, which put too much money in my bank account to qualify for assistance. That money was much smaller than the total of my outstanding debts at the time I lost my income. My family of five (myself, my disabled wife who was also turned down for disability in 1995, two adult children, and one minor child) has been supported by regular gifts from various relatives, and by occasional annonymous gifts from the community, and from old friends from High School. I cannot count on the timing of any of these gifts. Due to my brain injury, I failed to pay my NIPSCO bill two months in a row. When I discovered the oversight, I could not pay what I owed, so I made a payment arrangement with NIPSCO to make a series of $50.05 payments weekly.

Two weeks ago, I was making one of my $50.05 payments, with a new NIPSCO bill due in two days. I was in the process of discussing my temporary financial dilemma with a friend who does the accounting for my church. I planned to get assistance from my church to pay the upcomming bill, and I planned to reimburse the church when my back social security disability payments are deposited in my account sometime toward the end of March of this year. When I went to NIPSCO's website, I entered $50.05, the amount of my weekly payment agreement. The webform glitched, and rejected my payment. I carefully checked each digit of the number, which was correct, and I shrugged, and pressed enter again. This time, the form had erased my credit card security code information. I re-entered the security code, glanced at the rest of the form, and saw no other changes, and hit enter again, and a final confirmation. I never saw any problems with the transaction while making the payment, but when my receipt printed, it showed I had paid $926. I had just under $400 in my account. I laughed, fully confident that my bank would not honor the huge over-charge, but just to be sure, I immediately checked my online banking page, because past experience has shown that NIPSCO payments always display on my bank account instantly. My bank account did not reflect the payment, assuring me that the payment had not gone through. Just in case, I posted an email using the still-open transaction window, notifying NIPSCO that their online software had glitched, and had charged my account for my full account balance PLUS the amount of next month's bill that I was in the process of getting help to pay, because I have no income, and no possibility of depositing money to cover for their software error. In the email, I requested a phone call from NIPSCO immediately. I never received a phone call from NIPSCO.

The next morning, I checked my bank account again to make sure the large debit had not cleared. It was not there, but I held off buying groceries that day just in case it would be charged later. I continued waiting for the requested call from NIPSCO. The next day, I checked my bank account again, once in the morning, and once again before leaving to go grocery shopping. We had been snowed in for two weeks, and some kind annonymous person had paid to have a snow plough clear our driveway for us. At the grocery store, my debit card was declined. I immediately ran to the bank, and found that the NIPSCO debit was pending. They could not do anything to help me with the problem, but I still requested they mark that pending debit in their records to show that it was an unauthorized third-party withdrawal. I called NIPSCO from the bank, and informed them (again) that the large debit was due to a glitch with their online software. They informed me that no glitch was possible. (Do I need to comment on how ridiculous that claim is?) I told them to check their email, because they were informed two days prior of the error, and should never have submitted the errant debit. I also assured them the payment would not go through, because I would stop payment on it, in the unlikely event it should ever clear. When the debit cleared, I decided it would be simpler to just have money transferred from my partial car insurance settlement, to prevent any problems on PNC's end, and I would deal with NIPSCO on getting two NSF charges reimbursed. My investment company had previously sold assets for me to cover any emergencies, so when I called them, they assured me my bank would have my funds that night, and it should be displayed on my account balance the next day.

Four days later, PNC displayed that deposit, with enough additional NSF fees to ensure I no longer would have money to cover all of my various automatic withdrawals through the end of the month, including my mortgage, which up to now, has never been paid late. When I saw the extent of the NSF fee damage, my ownly possible course of action was to stop payment on the original error, and then to dispute the individual NSF fees, asking NIPSCO to reimburse me for whatever NSF fees result from their error. Two days ago, I was informed that I should have received a letter from PNC to sign, telling them that the payment to NIPSCO was not authorized. They told me they will not correct the record, and will continue charging NSF fees, because NIPSCO told them the charge was owed. (It wasn't yet owed at the time of the software error.) I'm still waiting for that letter from PNC. Meanwhile, my next NIPSCO bill will be coming due soon, and my church ended up giving my family a gift card to buy groceries instead of helping me with my NIPSCO bill.