Complaint Review: First Convenience Bank - Killeen Texas

Based on your 2 comments it would appear that your psychic. You who know nothing about who I am other than who I bank with, a few transactions I made in a couple of days over the period of my entire life, and I overdrafted my account. You now know my finances, how I spend them and whether or not I keep track of them. All without knowing my age, sex, occupation, name, marrital status, or life situation. With your superhuman know it all powers, you even know what I eat for dinner, amazing! I know your time is probably very vaulable, especially to someone as important and condescending as yourself, but I'd love for you to take a few minutes to teach some of us measly humans how you do it! While we're at it, could I please ask a questions since you know absolutely everthing there is to know about my account and the transactions in it. How come an ATM withdrawl made at their ATM right outside the branch location ( They were closed, I hadn't made it in time as I'd planned to do this transactions with a teller). posted immediately in real time at 8pm on at Friday in order these 3 extra overdraft fees to be possible. One of the transactions I'm referring to was made at the exact ATM the day prior around the exact same time frame, and it took 2 days to post? Also if you still have time (fingers crossed) I was hoping you could also explain why my available and current balance both showed the 3 transactions had already posted when I overdrafted the $100? This isn't my first rodeo, I know how pending VS posting and current VS available balances work. Yet somehow the rules are able to bend for them if it means they can juggle and process payments to ensure the most possible overdraft fees occur. Also the transactions I'm questioning weren't posted in order of their amounts. They posted in chronological order of the hour I was in Krogers and in the order I made them. However when they seen me pull put $100 and my account would fall into negative they claim transactions that had already posted now would take 2 days, however the withdrawl I was making at that time was posting, pending, and deducting in real time. Yet there is no proof anywhere in my bank statement other then them saying I told you so. My statements show all transactions made took one day to post and pend as they always do from that location, and 3 overdraft fees occured on a postive balance. 

PS- Really cool for someone as awesome as yourself to troll the sites thrusting your mind power skills upons all us morons to fawn over. I bet you're a blast at parties, Hey quick what's my favorite color, better yet can you even attempt to begin to fathom to legions of f**ks I dont give about your incorrect assumptions or the fact that a stranger behind a keyboard gets sassy with me?......Well......do you? Anyways thanks for your time, and hope to hear back soon about that pyschic tutoring session. 

:)

 It is now very obvious that you do not understand banking.

First of all regardless of if a bank "allows" you to overdraft doesn't matter.  It is still in the long run a bad financial planning strategy and one you need to look at correcting.  Let me give you an example.  How much money did you spend in your last paycheck eating out, for "entertainment" or for luxuries such as Cable TV and yes even (gasp) Internet?  I bet you can not give that answer off of the top of your head, but I will also bet it was more than $100.  So yes, if you are struggling that much perhaps you should cut the Cable, and instead of eating out..eat at home.

So onto the Overdrafts.

SO if the 3 transactions from the previous days were still pending how come this wasn't reflected in either my bank statement or ATM receipt? Again they could not provide an answer.

- Okay so let me provide an answer, that hopefully you understand..oh and is the same for EVERY bank.  There is a difference between "Pending" and "Posted".  When you swipe your debit card an "authorization" is created that puts a hold for that amount.  It gets deducted from your balance to show your new AVAILABLE balance.  So yes your ATM receipt will show you have attempted to debit that much money, and give you a new balance.

 But there is a second part.  The money isn't finally deducted("posted") until the merchant sends in the final authorization and the bank processes it during their regular banking days(ie. not weekends or holidays).  There is also a cut-off time for this posting, depending on the bank it could be anywhere from about 8PM to 11PM at night.  Meaning anything that is processed after that cut-off time will not be POSTED until the next business day.

Depending on the merchant it could take 1-3 days to process this final authorization, so something done on a Friday may not actually get posted until Monday or Tuesday.  Now, your bank will also automatically remove these "authorizations" if the final debit does not come in, within 3-5 days(depending on the bank).  But if at a later date the merchant finally submits it..the debit will still go through.

Now, in your case you intentionally overdrafted your account with the 3 other transactions still pending, as a result the bank per the terms YOU agreed to deducted all of the withdraws in order from highest to lowest giving you the overdrafts.   But they did NOT steal from you because when you got this bank account this is EXACTLY what you agreed to.

I would at this point normally talk about balancing your checkbook, keeping a written register..etc.  But when you INTENTIONALLY spend more money than you have in your account it doesn't matter how good you are at balancing your checkbook.

But I will give you some advise if you still desire to intentionally spend more money than you have.  Before you get an account at your next bank be sure to ask them the following.

- How much is your overdraft fee

- Do you charge an "extended" overdraft fee if you stay in overdraft more than a few days

- What is your posting order(highest to lowest, order of transactions..etc).

- What is your funds availability policy and do you post debits or credits first.

Oh and no I am not now or have I ever been an employee of this or any bank.  And if you had spent half the time you did researching how "bad" this bank is you could have found out the exact same things I have just told you.

Thanks for your comment to my report. I went into the bank at Krogers with my sister who banks there, and the young lady of course asked about who I banked with and started telling me about how I should open an account with them, as they do at most banks. I was in the market but hesitant because I'd heard multiple stories from family and friends about how they'd had issue after issue with them. However my sister had been with them for months and loved them so I listened to the young lady's pitch. One of the MAIN point she made was how they'd let you overdraft up tp $700 for a one time fee of $35. She pointed out it was much cheaper than the interest on payday loans and worked much the same way but with your bank. My sister agreed she'd used the service mutiple times and had no problems. And I knew how much payday loans cost the hard way in my early 20's. So after what I have to admit was a pretty good sales pitch, and thinking on it for a couple days, I shut down my account with my old bank and opened up with FCB. I've had no issues with any transactions posting out of chronological order the past 3 months, nor has my sister. I find it strange as well they can give me no proof showing their claims, and my bank statement (screenshot attached above) shows the transactions posted in an order much different than they say. I also find it strange there are pages upon pages of pages of complaints online that read extremely similar to mine. I would think if 100's of customers have had the same complaint with your business practices for years, perhaps changing things to provide better cutomer service might be the answer. 

PS- Over the course of 7yrs with my previous bank unexpected expenses had come up. Numerous times I'd done the same thing I attempted on 9/25 with FCB and had no problem at all covering $40 or $60 until payday. Not once did a problem even close to this occur. Every time the negative balance and one time $35 overdraft fee where charged when my check went in a few days later. I personally never experience this problem with my previous major bank, which I'll most likely being going back to very soon.

" I pulled out $100 from the same ATM as the day before, intending on using my one time $35 overdraft fee until my check hit 4 days later. "

  The fact that you thought the bank's one-time overdraft forgiveness was equivalent to a free short term loan tells me everything thing I need to know.

   If you're going to try and game the system, you'd do well to know how the system actually works first.    You're learning the expensive way.    By reading your post I can tell exactly how you managed to get multiple overdrafts.   Your downfall was ignorance of debit card posting schedules and bank's nightly batch processing procedures.    Rather than go into all of that, I'll just let you know that you would have had the identical (or worse) result had you tried to pull that stunt at any other major bank.   The problem is actually you.