Complaint Review: National City Bank

Look, I manage the electric contracts for my elderly mother. I'm at IT professional. It's always been a shell-game in Texas with this. Every company is "competing" is different ways. What I mean is they find a way to mislead, fool, and otherwise trick a consumer.

The only way that resembles actual competition is it's like the Midway at the State Fair. Those guys are also competing for your buck-fifty. Cirro is no different. "Oops we forgot to notify you regarding your contract end date. Oh here's your 100% increase next bill." The others have different scams--like the use of the word "credit" in their fact sheet.

Consumers don't realize the word makes sense from the companies side of ledger. They think they'll get a credit on their side. There's a ton more. But, you're probably already aware of that. If they can trip me up, image the money they're making on the energy midway. That's not competition; it's dishonest.

National City bank is no more; the US government passed it up; because, it was not fit enough to qualify for assistance under the 700 billion dollar Treasury program.

Shane, let's try to stay professional here; but, your last argument is exactly the same type of scripted type stuff we received from almost all of the National City customer service people. The few at National City who bothered to understand the bug we experienced sent us to the fine print policy about changing the dates in some cases etc.; but, you do not have to bother with that sort of thing. That last bit of head-in-sand logic sounds great; and, ends the issue for you and the bank. One thing I would like to point out: The crux of the bug was that I did use the date; it was changed by the bank; but, do not bother yourself with details my friend. Free advice: If you find yourself caught unemployed in the fall of National City Bank, you should consider becoming a healthcare insurance claims adjuster. You seem to possess the skills they are looking for.

Since National City no longer exists, does this close out the issue? I would think it would. In the end, many of the customers they ripped off, including the subject customer, have better credit ratings than does National City; and, the bank ends up were all badly run service businesses go--gone forever.

No...you cant spell see ya apparently. ANYWHO...the online banking program has always had the ability for you to select a payment date, I can tell you that from personal experience and on the employee side of the bank. I am in sales...like I said we take some of the overflow calls. So my job wont be going anywhere. The point is, this is still your fault. Point blank. yes, I am the type of person they want working here because I bring in over 6 million new money to the bank each and every month. one of the highest top ranked employees actually. But lets just stick to the issue at hand here....the option was there, you didnt use it, you didnt have the funds available, you overdrew the account on your own error, not the banks

What you suggest would completely dismantle how online banking programs work; because, you could never setup any future payments. I am sure, you are exactly the kind of customer service employee National City wants; and, I bet you do get many calls as you say. A perfect marriage.

A few days after my filing this report, National City announced it was contracting to spend millions updating its online banking program.

Can you spell C-Y-A?

Hi Patrick,

I work at National City. Nope sorry no error here. I dont work in online banking, rather in customer service, however we deal with online banking a lot. If you schedule us to send a payment, it will be sent on the day you specify so therefore any fees you incur can and will stand. Like some of the above comments, you need to make sure you have adequate funds in the account before making the payments.

Up is down. Down is up. Left is right and right is left. I've been saying this all along. These banks change things to "make them better", then they change them again and make them worse. Case in point. Years ago, it was gonna be better to do away with checks. The convience of credit cards. Now millions of people are up to their butts in debt, with interest rates on some cards at 24.9% interest AND overlimit fees AND late fees. THEN comes the ATM card. You won't have to use a check OR a charge card. Oh wonderful, things will be soooo much better and think of all the trees we'll be saving. Now, they're screwing people with fees on ATM cards. 50 cents to $1.50 per transaction. Next we have the wonder of the debit card. We're all saved. Now charging people a fee to use their debit cards. On top of that, due to the "speed" and certain other traits of the debit card, the money either comes out of your account right away OR maynot come out for a few days to a week. In some transactions a "hold" is put on your money until the actual amount is verified. Great.


Then we have the wonder of internet and ONLINE banking. What a great idea. Except it isn't in real time and doesn't reflect an actual balance in most cases. The wonder of online banking. I can tell the computer to "make" a payment on a certain date. Except a certain date doesn't mean a certain date to this bank. 9/26 maynot mean 9/26. It might mean 9/25 or 9/24 depending on the bank's interpetation. I remember when all these services were suppose to make our lives better. I don't use any of them and my life's just fine without them.

From what I see, what you're saying is that you have the payments scheduled in such a way that they aren't to be disbursed until you have the money in your account. (In other words, you have the payments arrival date set so that none of your payments are disbursed until the 15th.) However, they are in turn sending the payments out on the 12th instead of the 15th which is causing you to have NSF fees when the payments are sent (and received) before you had expected them to be sent.

Our old bank would take money directly out of our account when sending a bill pay. If the money wasn't there, they didn't send the bill pay. National City, however, will issue a bill payment check to a company EVEN if there is currently no money in your account. I could be wrong, but I believe this is where he is having a problem.

I don't know any way around this other than never setting up recurring payments...which defeats one HUGE purpose of bill pay.

The point is that the bank is changing the online payment transactions that I send and they validate. Robert's arguments are irrelevant.

The only difference with online bill pay is that the bank is writing the check or sending the electronic payment. You'll note that they only state that by using bill pay you save on stamps and envelopes. They certainly don't state you can draw on future funds before they are deposited.

National City online payment policies have been described by noteworthy bank system and technology analyst Alice Wang as having a history of messaging payment methods to customers; then, changing the message in the fine print, which is exactly what we have here. She goes on to say that National City settlement method policy leaves customers confused and disenchanted (Wang, 2004). She was being very kind and thoughtful toward National City Bank. When bank policies are designed to extract fees from them, customers are often more than disenchanted. Can you spell A-T-L-A?

References
Wang, A. (November 9, 2004). Improving Bill Pay to Unlock Online Banking Profit. Bank Systems & Technology. Retrieved from banktech.com/story/news/showArticle.jhtml? articleID=52600232: www.banktech.com

When using online banking you generally set up payments for at least an entire month to be paid by a certain day. You don't go into online banking and issue enter the information manually for every payment on the exact date that the funds are available.

The problem in this situation is the policy of the bank. They are telling their clients to enter the date they want the check to be paid and then moving that date forward.

Your suggestion doesn't address the issue at hand because this isn't about "writing" checks, it's about managing your finances using online banking.

Not being able to set up recurring payments in advance is like not having an online payment process at all. What you suggest is not practical. Recurring online payments that have been set up advance should not be changed by the bank without disclosing to the customer what changed. In fact, under the present fine-print policy at National City, all recurring payments can be disbursed at any time: they could process the next 12 months car payments today, without disclosing a thing to the customer. They have had to distort their fine-print policy around the bug so far that they could issue any payment at any time and still be within their policy.

I am assuming the best of National City Bank when I say that they have buggy online payee module. But, their customer service people were pretty adamant: They indicated that the program is working as designed--which means they fully intended to change payments after they've been submitted; and, that without disclosing the change to the customer.

One could argue that a buggy program represents negligence; but, designing the change into the online payee and payment modules of the program goes beyond negligence. Can you spell p-u-n-i-t-i-v-e?
cy around the bug saying that they simply guarantee the payment will arrive no later than the date the customer has provided. That means they could send all recurring payments--now.

Then issue the bill pay, then it doesn't matter if it takes five days or two days. No NSF.

Seems to be the sensible thing to do. You wouldn't write a check unless the funds were in your account.

Just a thought.

It appears to be the case that during an online payment transaction, the National City online banking program cannot recognize a payee by it's name and address alone when returning the processing period to the customer--it appears to also requires the payee account number to do this for a payment transaction: this results in the default 5 day processing period for payees with new account numbers or the first use of a payee; even if the payee is in the National City online program's payee database--American Express, GEMoneyBank, etc. Having a 5 day processing period is fine. As long as the customer knows that's what it is.

However, since the online banking program always recognizes the payee by name and address alone when the online program prepares to actually disburse, process, and deliver the payments to the payee--no payee account number needed; it changes the processing period from the 5 days reported to the customer to 2 days for online type payees--without disclosing the change to the customer--resulting in funds being disbursed three full days earlier than planned by their customer.

Naturally, since the customer is unware that the processing period has been shortened, the above practice can result in forced NSF changes.

The bank appears to be very aware of the bug's existance and has warped its fine-print policy into a defense to throw at concerned customers.