Wachovia, Joe Gerko ripping-off customers rude behavior again Ripoff Lambertville New Jersey

Again the local branch of Wachovia seems more interested in collecting fees than providing good service. Here's my story.

I went to a club with some friends and had a meal. When the check came I asked the server to split the bill. Half on my check card and half on my friend's card. A day later I check my online balance and see an overdraft. I know I had enough money in my account to cover the tab so I check the holds on my account online. I see that there are two holds for the same club. One for $82.00 and one for $41.00. Apparently the club mistakenly ran the entire bill on my card, realized the mistake, corrected it and ran the card again splitting the bill. This put $123.00 on hold and caused an overdraft and a fee.

When I went to the local Wachovia branch to ask for the fee to be reversed Mr. Gerko, the branch manager, first said that I should have overdraft protection. I told him I do have overdraft protection and at that Mr. Gerko says "Oh, the fees only $5.00." So I said since it's only $5.00 you won't mind returning my money. Mr. Gerko's reply was " The bank didn't make the mistake why should I refund the fee? If you want your money you should go to the club and ask them for it." At this response I got angry and asked for his supervisor's name and phone number. That's when Mr. Gerko agreed to refund my money. I then demanded that he refund a fee for another mistake a gas station made when running my card for a fill-up. That time the attendant ran the card for $128.00 rather than $28.00 and this caused another overdraft. Mr. Gerko then said that he has refunded fees for me in the past and that this would be the last time he would do it.

Mr. Gerko is right he has reversed fees once for me in the past and I had to push the matter aggressively to get him to do that. The reason for the overdraft that time was because of the practice of restaurants, gas stations, hotels etc. running your check card for more money than the actual purchase and then the bank placing that money on hold for, in the case of Wachovia, 72 hours. Since the customer usually doesn't know about this extra money that is on hold they assume they have enough money in their accounts and make additional purchases, which result in overdrafts and fees. In the case of restaurants and gas stations the transaction is completed when the receipt is printed and signed. Therefore the hold should be dropped but the bank leaves the money on hold in the hopes that you will make more purchases with your check card and overdraft your account.

In the above scenario the club not only made a mistake running my card but they added %30, without my knowledge, to cover any tip I might want to add. This is all legal and the banks are taking advantage of it to collect fees.

I can only come to the conclusion that Mr. Gerko's position on an overdraft when someone makes a mistake when running your check card is that it's an opportunity for the bank to collect a fee from their customers. I can only further conclude that if you overdraft your account when more money than the actual purchase price is placed on hold, as in a restaurant adding %30 tip without knowing how much you want to tip, that this is again an opportunity for the bank to steal more money from their customers. This is wrong and should be stopped!!!!!

Pat
Lambertville, New Jersey
U.S.A.