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BB&T Takes my whole check every week! ripoff Elkhorn City Kentucky
I know exactly what Albert's talking about. BB&T does this to me, too. Let me tell you about my story with BB&T. This is so screwed up.
I started working at a place where I had to have direct deposit or get a paycard. I was told by some people that they were having problems with the paycards and that I should just go with direct depsoit. I didn't have a bank account at the time because I had just closed one out at a different bank and hadn't really been satisfied with them. I'm thinking "BB&T is about two minutes from my house. I'll go with them." So, I go sign up for BB&T.
The first day that I signed up, the lady told me that I would receive my checks within 7-10 business days and that the payment for them would be deducted from my account balance. I told her that was fine. She also gave me a sheet of paper containing what she said was my temporary user ID and password for the BB&T website. She said she was setting my account up online and that it would be ready within the evening.
So, I came home and went online to change my password for my account. However, I was unable to get into it. I was thinking, maybe she got busy and was unable to set up the account. I figured I'd try it later. That was in October of 2006. Three months shy of a year later, I'm still trying to log into my account at www.bbt.com and am unable to do so. I've contacted them several times about it and they kept saying they would fix it and they never did. I even clicked on "enroll now", thinking perhaps she just forgot to enroll me and I'd do it myself. It won't let me because it says my information that I am entering is incorrect.
Well, I am 100% certain that I know my own SSN, PIN, and debit card number, as I have the first two commited to memory (and they work for everything else), and the third I am staring at. So apparently my information was incorrectly entered into the system by whoever set the checking account up.
Now, on to the second problem. As I mentioned, they said that they would send my checks within 7-10 business days. I waited and waited. No checks. I kept waiting. Still no checks. I called them. "Looks like we forgot to order them," they said. They said they'd have them sent right to me.
I waited 10 business days. No checks. Called again. No checks. I went back and talked to one of the tellers and explained to her that they had been giving me the runaround over my checks for months. I didn't get checks until probably around January and it was a miracle that I got them then. They finally had the sense to order them for me. I don't know what was so hard about it in the first place.
Third problem was that a while back I lost my bank statement that was sent to me in the mail. Since I'm obviously not able to go online and look at my history, I went to BB&T and asked them if they could give me a printout of that time period. It was only about a week later than I had received it but there were some things on there that would not be covered in the last thirty days that I needed to check out. The lady would not give me one because it would take "too long to look up." My mother worked at a bank before. I know that you can customize the dates and go back several months on an account. The lady was just lazy and didn't want to help me.
And now we come to the biggest problem of all. BB&T absolutely loves to rip me off. They love taking my money, apparently, more than anything. This is how they do it. My check gets deposited. I check with them and am told that the funds are in the account and are available. I pay my bills. Mind you, I write checks to pay most of my bills, which I obviously don't do until my paycheck is deposited into my account (this happens every other Friday).
I mail the checks in. They each take a couple days to get to their destinations. Then, as we all know, the businesses that receive them don't cash them the second they get them in their hand. I don't spend any other money on anything because I usually have enough cash or can use my credit card to get gas for the car, and food of course.
The checks get cashed. I look on my bank statements and what do we have? Overdraft fees, overdraft fees, overdraft fees galore. My account balance pretty much stays in the negative. They wait until businesses cash my checks and THEN they post my deposit. How they can get away with that, I will never know. If I take a deposit to the account, sometimes it takes days and days upon days to post to the account. Yet, they tell me it's available to use when I ask them. I don't know what it is exactly that they're doing that makes this legal to do to someone.
I've looked over my bank statements time and again, and I am NOT spending money that I don't have. I even have to account for all of the overdraft fees that I get during the month. That means I'll be $200 in the negative (which is funny because I don't have overdraft protection and they're NOT supposed to be paying things out on my account if it will put me in the negative) and get paid $600. Then I only have $400 with which to pay bills and whatnot. I take those things into consideration. It's not like I try to spend the whole $600 if my bank takes $200 of it.
I've even had occasions where my car insurance, which is deducted from my account automatically every month, was taken out on one certain day, as stated by the insurance company, but the bank states that it was taken out on a different day. For example, say I got my pay deposited on the 17th and my car insurance was taken out of the account on the 20th.
The bank has come back and said that it was taken out on the 16th. I'll call and be listening to the transactions and I'll hear certain things and then I'll call a couple days later and it's like, there are things inserted in there before things that I've already heard. For example, say I had called them on the 16th and nothing had been posted for that day. Say I called back on the 17th and it said I had a deposit of $500 and a balance of, say, $550.
Then let's say I called back on the 20th. It would tell me I had a balance of $402. Where'd all the money go if I started out with $550 on the 17th and the car insurance company is swearing they didn't take the money til today? Well obviously I started out with a balance of $50. Then they take away my car insurance which is $108 per month. That takes me into the negative.
Then they add a $34 overdraft fee, which they love to do. Then the next day they add a $6 overdraft fee because they have their stupid $6/day rule. Then they re-add in my $500 check and that gives me $402. Look how much it cost me. This sounds really stupid and impossible, but I'm telling you, people, I've had this happen to me enough to know. I don't think it's just my account, either. I've met plenty of people who do their banking there and for people that have lots of deposits monthly like me, most of them understand what I'm talking about, about dates mysteriously changing and that sort of thing.
All I'm saying is I know it sounds stupid but I'm not so dumb that I can't do math. I don't have good credit (due to separation and being left with bills I could not pay, which were charged off. not something I wanted but it happened) and I can't get an account anywhere else. I have to use the account that I have now or not get a bank account because no one else will let me sign up for one.
So it's not that I stay with BB&T because I love them. It's because I don't have any way of getting a paycheck if I don't. Those paycards are crap and everyone says they don't work half of the time. Some people might like BB&T, but I, on the other hand, am pretty sure I never will. If I had $1 million in there I'm sure they'd find a way to put me in the negative.
Ls103
Elkhorn City, Kentucky
U.S.A.
Click here to read other Rip Off Reports on BB&T Branch Banking and Trust Co.
2 Updates & Rebuttals
Katelyn
Springfield,Virginia,
U.S.A.
Here are a few tips
#3UPDATE EX-employee responds
Thu, August 02, 2007
Ls103,
I'm sorry to hear about your situation. Unfortunately, not all BB&T branches are this way. When you opened the account, and the Relationship Banker told you she would order checks, did you have a balance in the account? Sometimes certain exceptions are made, where clients can make the 'opening' deposit at a later time.
If this was the case, they most likely didn't order them because they didn't want you to overdraw your account. If, however, the employees at that branch were incompetent or lazy, you could have ordered checks by visiting or calling another branch, or going online.
To solve your Online Banking dilemma, you could have called the BB&T Phone24 system. If you received a debit card, it's on the bank: 1-800-BANK BBT. When I first set my account up, I had the same problem, and calling Phone24 solved it (I called not because the employees were incompetent, but because it was during a weekend).
Unfortunately, there's absolutely no reason for an employee to say 'it'll take too long' to look up your statement-it only takes a few seconds. I'd suggest talking to the manager of the branch.
Onto your final problem: I've read many complaints about BB&T and other banks "ripping people off" and a large number of overdraft complaints have a common catalyst: direct deposits (and even regular deposits) falling on a Friday.
If you look at your statements, you'll see your paycheck getting "deposited" twice for that pay period. If you look at the balance, however, you'll see that the 2nd "deposit" is the one that increases the balance.
The first is merely a "Notice of Future Deposit", as it says in BB&T systems, which posts on that day at midnight. The actual monetary deposit goes into your acct the next business day at midnight.
So if you get paid on the 15th, on the 14th, it'll show the notice of future deposit on your acct, which goes in at midnight. On the 15th at midnight, the money gets deposited, less any withdrawals/purchases you've made.
It could be the case that your Friday 'deposit' might be a 'notice of future deposit', and that the money actually went in on Monday midnight. If you use a debit card, it'll deduct the purchase amounts at that time, and most likely your payments will come out of your account a few days later.
Here's a useful tip for you: open another BB&T Free account (yes, I know what you're thinking, but hear me out). The first account will primarily deal with your direct deposit/normal deposits/purchases. Your second one, for payments.
When your paycheck comes in, make a CASH withdrawal from your direct deposit account for the total amount of your payments for that period, and make a CASH deposit into your new account, the one without direct deposit, right there at the teller window (NEVER at the ATM). Get checks for this new account, write the checks for the payments to the respective companies, and after a few weeks, everything will settle out.
It takes a few extra steps than we'd all like, but it definitely ensures your payments will go through, and the payment account, nor your original account, will overdraw. I'm not questioning your math abilities, rather this is the way I was taught when I first opened a checking account at 18. It's an easier way to manage your money.
Unfortunately, I can't really suggest anything about BB&T and your insurance company quoting incorrect dates. It might have to do with the fact that your insurance company's bank might get it a few days later from BB&T, and the company then gets it in their systems from their bank. Since there's a few 'hands' the money is going into, it could create a slight discrepancy. My suggestion to you would be to call Phone24 and set up your Online Banking as soon as possible.
Some of the things Nighthawk said are correct, but BB&T doesn't process their transactions that way. In actuality, BB&T is one of the few banks that has next day availability. If you make a cash deposit, it's immediately in your account. You wont see it in your statement online that day, but it's there, and the statement online will update the next day. If you make a check deposit, the deposit amount is made available the next business day.
As for Current/ledger balances vs Available balances..If any institution processes in Current/ledger balances only, you don't know exactly what you have in your account. Available balances are the 'real' balances, any purchases, deposits, etc will show up. It's what is physically in your account. Current balances only show things that haven't posted yet, purchases don't automatically deduct from the balance, and you're left waiting til the purchase clears your account to know your definite, after the purchase, balance.
Anyway, I hope you, and others, will find this information useful. BB&T can't be a bad bank if they're still in business, and if they're one of the top 10 banks in the U.S. And I can't stress this enough, ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS use a check register! You can write in how much your deposit was, the individual checks you mailed out, the date of the checks, amounts, as well as a balance.
Nighthawk
Cincinnati,Ohio,
U.S.A.
Consumers beware - how to avoid this trap
#3Consumer Suggestion
Wed, August 01, 2007
Many of the larger banks are enhancing overdraft fee income by using one or both of these techniques:
1) Debit Card and other electronic activity is "deducted" from the account balance the moment the bank knows about it, even if the item takes a few days to clear - as in the case of your car insurance. The bank has authorized the transaction, so they are on the hook for the money. Anytime you draw on those funds, they're gonna ring the register.
2) The availability of deposited funds is reduced by "float" -- that is the bank won't credit you for the deposit until they get the money. If you're being paid electronically though, there is no float. In most cases for deposits of checks the bank collects from the other bank in 1-2 days, but that availability is not always passed to the customer.
The best way to avoid this trap:
1) Use cash or checks and avoid debit cards.
2) Check the website -- pay attention to the available balance - not the ledger. A $1000 deposit may show as $1000 ledger but only $100-200 available.
3) Find a small local bank or credit union and move your account. They tend to be less sophisicated and work off ledger (actual) balances.
I hope this helps.