Wachovia Debiting account how they see fit to make more money off of you Ripoff Hickory North Carolina

My problem started Tuesday morning with Wachovia Bank. My wife and I had went shopping this weekend for Christmas and had money to cover our spending. On Monday 12/18/2006 at 4:30pm , I go to a Wachovia Branch and cash a check for $1500.00 and then turn around and deposit the cash because I wanted to have the amount available to me. I take the receipt and go to my office and check my online balance which says, $1600+ in the account available to me.

So I go online and purchase a $761.00 dollar gift for my children for Christmas because the money is showing available to me. The next morning I check the account and I have $840.00 in overage fees from Wachovia bank. I call them and they say there is nothing they can do and that I went over my limit. I contact a local branch and go to talk to a money manager at that branch.

She refers me to the main branch in town and I go talk to Kathy Wolfe at that branch 828-323-2166 and she says there is nothing she can do and sends it up to a district manager for review. From then to the next day the district manager, Laura Bence 828-232-3768, doesn't call me. So I call the customer service 800 number and speak to someone again and explain the situation and he gives me back $125.00 of my money but that is after saying that I did this on purpose.

I then call Kathy Wolfe back and talk to her and she attempts to get a hold of Laura Bence again, as I had tried and got her voicemail. Laura does call me about an hour later and agrees to refund another $250.00 of my money as that is all she can do. This may seem straight forward but here is the issue.

- I had enough money to stay in the positive with our purchases coming thru from the weekend.
- I deposited $1500.00 cash because it goes straight in and is available to use, but on the contrary it is only available for cash withdrawal not your check card.

- I checked my online account after the deposit and it says Available $1600+.
- I made my purchase online because it said I had the money available.

- Wachovia bypasses all the other pending amounts in my account and puts thru the $761.00 purchase right then, and guess what I have $739.99 available in my account. Automatically in the red for the 25+ transactions that were ahead of that one last purchase.
- My error was in the assumption that the $1500.00 was available to me instantly, but if they would have deducted the charges as they had originally come in then there would have only been one thing over the limit which would have been the $761.00 charge and thus a NSF fee of $35.00.

Since they decide to put the biggest (and day later purchase) one first then I have $980.00 in NSF fees charged to me. I would have made that payment next day if I known cash wasn't instant for check cards but in that same token why should they have the option to take the biggest payment (made a day later than any other) and put it thru before everything else already showing pending in the online statement.

Instead of them making $35.00 of my error they made $980.00 off of me minus the $375.00 I have managed to get back so far.

They told me that it is there policy for them to take the biggest amounts first, no matter which purchases were purchased first. I have had NSF funds before and never complained because they were legit and my fault but this is ridiculous that they I would have been fine if they wouldn't have pushed the biggest amount thru first and debited accordingly.

Jonathan
Newton, North Carolina
U.S.A.