Complaint Review: BB&T - Nationwide

Consumer rights, transparent operations and any kind of human decency went out the window with this company for me in the last two weeks. Allow me to walk you through the financial nightmare I just had to struggle through with BB&T, none of which was my fault - honestly! To preface all of this, my bank account very much reflects my hand-to-mouth-out-of-necessity lifestyle. I work two jobs, but my husband is disabled so every penny we have coming in usually goes right back out to keep us fed, housed and healthy.

October 21st, 8pm. I pull $100 in cash out at a branch ATM with one card for another financial institution, using my BB&T card a minute later to deposit the same $100 - 5 $20 bills - into my BB&T account. I get my receipt and go home, this process is a very familiar one to me and I've never had an issue before. Once home, I log into my BB&T account to check the deposit and pay a bill, and I'm surprised to see the $100 credited, then immediately debited as an "ATM adjustment."

October 21st, 9pm: I call the 800 number to ask about this weird adjustment, where the woman on the phone explains to me that because I made the deposit after the 6 pm EST cutoff for the bank day, it wouldn't officially post until 2 am on the 22nd. Okay, that's annoying, but fine. I get it.

October 22nd: My husband and I travel to South Carolina on a trip we needed to take, spending approximately $90 on gas, food and supplies at four locations along the way. I have the assurances of the BB&T rep that I'd spoken to the evening prior that the $100 was in my account and available by now, so I didn't think anything of it. 

October 23rd: I login to check my account balance in the morning and am unpleasantly surprised to find what should be $10 is actually -$90. Frantic searching through my recent transactions while logged in online turns up absolutely nothing regarding the ATM deposit, even the "credit then debit" weirdness I'd seen the night of my deposit is missing entirely. I call the 800 number and I am informed that there is an "known issue with the ATM," it has "affected several people" and that they're "working on it." I call the branch itself to get a more exact timeline of when this will be fixed, after 12 minutes on hold I talk to a teller that says she'll call me back after looking into it. When she does, I explain that I'm very concerned that I had to call the bank to find this out as opposed to being informed by them and get the equivalent of a verbal shrug, along with assurances it will all be cleared up in "2 to 3 business days." The ATM, I'm told, is serviced by a third party company and the bank doesn't have anything to do with it at all and can't help - to make matters worse, this "company" apparently only comes to the ATMs on Tuesdays and Fridays, so my Tuesday night deposit issue wouldn't be discovered until Friday (??) At this point I'm pretty angry.

October 24th: My direct deposit paycheck comes through on Fridays, so I login to my account in the morning, expecting that the $180 I have coming in will at least leave me with a balance of $90 until they find the missing deposit. Imagine my surprise when I'm greeted with a balance of -$56 instead. BB&T had the unimaginable gall to charge me FOUR OVERDRAFT FEES on the incorrect balance of their OWN ERROR, to the tune of -$144!!! This new and completely unethical (and very likely illegal) charge "ate" my entire paycheck, leaving me with no operating capital whatsoever. I call the branch, furious, and explain this unbelievable fuel-to-the-fire issue, expecting it to be repaired immediately. There's nothing, they say, that they can do about it at all. The overdraft charges cannot possibly be fixed at all until the ATM deposit issue is cleared up, so sorry, sucks to be you. This makes zero sense to me, so I call the 800 number again. I talk to the only human being at this company who I feel gave half a d**n about making my financial life right again, and she puts in a fraud report for me, which she says should have been done in the first place by the branch. Again I get the "2 to 3 business days" crap. I'm livid.

I call the branch again, telling them that the fraud report has been filed and that I have no money to put gas in my car to drive my husband to his medical appointments. I get another verbal shrug and a suggestion that "maybe I could try using the card at a gas station and seeing if it works." Call me crazy, but isn't that fraud? It's no different than knowingly writing a bad check, plus, when pressed, the teller I was speaking to admitted that she couldn't guarantee that anything more than the four overdraft charges would be refunded.

October 25th & 26th: My balance is still -$144. No contact from the bank.

October 27th: My balance is still -$144. No contact from the bank.

October 28th, 1pm: My balance is still -$144 and I'm about to lose my mind I'm so angry. I call in the morning to see if any progress has been made, it hasn't, so I tell them I'm coming down to talk to them in person at lunch, because this is nonsense. I go to the branch itself and ask to speak to the manager. Once I've sat down with him, the following was communicated to me:

• He was not aware that two of his own employees gave me a "2 to 3 business day" timeline, which would have made EOD Tuesday the 28th the absolute latest point this deposit and overdraft problem would be settled.

• He was not aware that the ATM third party company deposit problem was a company-wide issue, as the woman at the 800 number that took my fraud report had told me.

• He was not aware that I had filed a fraud report with the 800 number, something the woman at the 800 number told me had to be done and the branch should have done. He immediately told me they shouldn't have done this, that they were wrong, and then tried to heavily imply that the reason the resolution was taking so long was my fault for filing the fraud report, which apparently conflicted with their own "internal process.

• He told me that BB&T had asked his branch (and, I'm sure, all branches) not to use the "internal process" to settle problems like this anymore, going forward.

He proceeds to put in some kind of report or request to get my four overdraft fees overturned that day, which they do in the early evening. I knew it wasn't possible that a branch had no recourse or discretion whatsoever to adjust cascading OD fees on their own error, yet two employees of the branch and the 800 number told me that there was nothing they could do. Lie much? Turns out they were waiting for the deposit issue to clear because if they could submit it in one big chunk it would mean less paperwork to keep track of. To hell with me and my need for access to my own money for daily expenses.

October 29th: Logging into my account in the morning FINALLY shows me that the $100 is back in my account where it belongs. It took BB&T A FULL WEEK to find $100 that I deposited ON CAMERA and HAD A RECEIPT FOR. They held $244 of my money hostage, much of it for seven days, earning interest on it the entire time, and giving me absolutely zero answers or outreach that I didn't initiate. In the interim my husband missed a doctor's appointment, we're eating ramen noodles because I can't go to the grocery store, and we almost get a utility shut off because I don't have access to my own money.

When the branch manager called me on the 28th to tell me that the overdraft fees had been credited back to my account (as well as telling me they'd need another "day or two" for the $100 deposit investigation), I wished him luck with the other customers at the branch that had the same issue I did. His response? "Well, they all had money in their account to cover the issue, so you're really the only one with this problem and urgency." I have never done business with a company that made me feel so small, insignificant and treated their customers with such condescention. This is an unconscionable way to act and do business, BB&T, and I'm not about to let you get away with it. Here's hoping this particular batch of dirty laundry loses you a few potential accounts.