Complaint Review: BB&T Bank - Greer South Carolina

In April of this year my husband called my cell while I was traveling to let me know he tried to make a purchase and our debit card was declined. I told him "no way, I know there's plenty of money in that account." However, since I was in the car I only had the number from the back of my card to call to determine the balance. I was shocked to hear that is was NEGATIVE over $1100. I of course started thinking of what I could have done wrong, what did I add incorrectly and did I transfer too much money from my checking to my savings account. That said, I couldn't wait to get home to pull the account up on line to find out what the transactions were that made up this negative balance since the automated phone system only gives you the last few transactions recorded. When I got online I noted that the statement was not yet updated enough to reflect the individual transactions and still couldn't determine how this balance was negative. I called a customer service line (for which I was charged $2.50) and was able to speak with someone live, this was 10:00 pm so I was actually grateful.

They began to read off the transactions that were in hold status (not yet posted) and when they got to the Coach Pocketbook.com transaction for over $300 I knew something was up. They went on to read several more transactions we had no knowledge of. However, the transactions were made using mine, not my husbands debit card. I still had the card in my possession so of course we were baffled but it turns out we were victims of fraud. They were terrific at the time, assured me that I was protected, etc and I was thoroughly relieved. However, don't be deceived, as "protected" as I was I had to do a lot of leg work to get them to erase all of the overdraft fees and get the monies released back to my account. Being that this account is our only means of support we were in dire straights for money until this cleared up. Almost a week later, after multiple calls to the bank and the merchants I was finally able to see a debit balance in my account. Very little leg work and research done by the bank! Don't believe those commercials you see about how you are protected and your money will be available to you the next day!! Had I not hounded the merchants to release the funds BB&T would have sat on their butts and never released the money back to my account.

At that time I asked how I would be protected from this again and was assured that as long as we changed cards we would be fine so the initial cards we had were cancelled and we were issued new ones. (By the way, I was told by the police that the shipping address for the purchases were fraudulent, they didn't exist, so the theory was that someone overseas had gotten access to my card information and was testing it first to see if it would work)

On Tuesday of this week I was heading out to the store to buy my child birthday gifts for the next day. Before doing so I wanted to reconcile my checking account so I pulled up my on line statement and about fell out of my chair when on the summary page I saw a big red NEGATIVE $810.00. Needless to say I called the number on the back of the card, spoke with a live person to find that this had happened yet again. This time, over $1600 in purchases and over $1000 in overdraft fees. This was Tuesday, it is now Friday and I still have no money in my account. I have no money to purchase gas, a gallon of milk, let alone my child's birthday went by without gifts or a celebration. I realize this may not be the bank's fault initially but they apparently didn't instruct me well enough last time, they should have closed that first account entirely not just changed the cards. Of course since this only happened to me four months ago the first time they are looking into it more aggressively but the tone I receive from them is more like they are investigating MY potential involvement in it which thoroughly ticks me off. What about these merchants who took these orders without verification and put these funds on hold against my account? Where is their responsiblility in this?? I called each merchant and told them my issue, each one told me they suspected fraud but couldn't tell me why but did say each of the orders was placed in a "warm" status due to suspicion. If that's the case, WHY HOLD MY FUNDS??? Anyway, I spoke with the people at my branch that I worked with last time. They didn't seem very sympathetic either. I explained that I had exactly $3.00 in cash on me and that I had bills I HAD to pay that day. I was assured I could still use the account but when I went to get gas the card was immediately declined. This was after 6:00 pm so I called the lady the next day (Barbara Tippen) only to find out she is on vacation the rest of the week. Way to support your customers! I then asked for operations manager, instead got transferred to the other Relationship Manager. She knew nothing of the issue and I had to go through it all again. I compelled them to please hurry up and release those funds since I had caught all of the shipments before they went out and notified the merchants of the fraud issue. I was told "you have to wait until they post in order for us to even dispute them" I explained numerous times that these funds may never post, again I had a cancellation placed on all of the orders. Each time I called, I did not get a call back, hours would go by even though I implored them of my desperation to put gas in my car just to get to work. I walked in the bank this morning with checks I needed to cash knowing they would give me a hard time due to the negative balance needing to be cleared before they would cash anything further. (my husbands payroll checks that we save until end of month to pay incidentals) I argued with the relationship manager because she wanted to close the first account, open a new one and have me deposit those. I had already explained several times I NEEDED THE MONEY TO PAY MY MORTGAGE which it was intended for, I didn't want to deposit it! After my stating that BB&T was doing nothing to support my needs as a customer she initialed the checks and finally allowed me to cash them. After paying bills I now have $20 to live on until we get paid again next Friday or until they finally stop dragging their feet, release the funds for all the fraudulent purchases and all of the overdraft fees. How do you explain treating your customers who are clearly victims more like the perpetrators? This is so frustrating! They, BB&T, should take some responsibility. They need to do more to ensure this won't happen again to the same customer and need to take a stand against these issues. They also need to investigate more thoroughly to find the root cause or the people who are doing this but they say they have too many of them and unless the charges are more than $10k not a whole lot is done to find out who did this. The police investigators try but when the ship to locations are out of state they hit roadblocks. Therefore, I'm all set for this to happen again.

Just the stress of figuring out how I am going to put gas in my car, feed my kids this week and explain to my creditors why I can't pay any of my bills is killing me. It has made me sick, nervous and downright feeling like a victim.

Too bad BB&T doesn't care enough about their customers to really help and put a sense of urgency into an issue like this.

What a joke. You can bet that once this is cleared up I will no longer be banking with BB&T!!!!

Lyn

Lyman, South Carolina

U.S.A.

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