Wachovia- South Carolina NSF, holding money Sumter South Carolina

I want to say first that I am not one to complain about anything unless it's truly a problem. I've overdrawn from my account before, and I've taken full responsibilty for it. There are many reasons why I would rather use cash or money order to pay for everything, but we do use checks and debit cards for some purchases.

This past week, we've been in the red, and not because of over spending on our part. In fact, we knew we'd overdraft if we didn't make a deposit to cover some costs that we'd have to pay later on in the week (all done via automatic payment). As a precaution, we deposited twice the amount of money than what we needed to keep from going in the red. We made the cash deposit at our local branch, and have the receipt for the deposit.

So, 3 days later, we went to the ATM to get some cash for a small purchase, and we were overdrawn. Of course, the bank was closed at this time, so we had to wait until the next day to question it.

When we sat down that night and looked at our statement online, the bank HELD the deposit until all of our automatic charges posted. They charged us the $35 NSF fees for both purchases, THEN deposited the cash. And to make matters worse, we were basically charged 2 NSF fees for one purchase- like a NSF fee for a NSF fee... Not sure if that makes sense?

If this is common practice for Wachovia, we're switching banks ASAP. If customers are depositing cash, there shouldn't be any time for that to clear. I could understand if we had deposited a check. But that money should have been available within the first 24 hours of the deposit, if not immediately.

Because of the bank not applying our deposit, we are overdrawn, with another 5 days before payday. We're going tomorrow to chew off someone's head about this, but we were already told by a CSR on the phone that they were not allowed to refund the NSF fees.

Bananapuff
Sumter, South Carolina
U.S.A.