Complaint Review: Southtrust Bank - Fernandina Beach Florida

I've had my bank account with this place for years. I usually dump all of my income tax checks in there and milk them slowly. I've had no problem paying two fees a month - one to have the bank account and the other to have my ledger put on the web so I can balance at any time. I've been very careful with my ledger all this time because I'm a single mother in a very delicate balance. My money is the only money I make; child support is a joke.

This past year has been a living nightmare. Not only did it take them months to send me my replacement VISA when the old one expired, but their new 1-800 number system and way of giving their people the runaround is nothing but a big scam anymore.

For the past year, money has been mysteriously disappearing out of my account. For a while I thought it might be my fault, even though I am using Microsoft Money and (last I checked), computers don't make math errors. So, I started to compensate out of my personal ledger with transactions I called "mysterious funds go bye bye" in order to make my personal balance match the lowering balance Southtrust has been giving me. Mind you, these transactions going out of my balance weren't REAL payments so that money should have added up for me somehow somewhere if the bank were not ripping me off. But they never have.

I'm usually out of town in places like NJ or NY, so coming to FL just to balance my account is incredibly inconvenient if not impossible. I'd tried before to contact the bank and was told repeatedly to go to my local branch. Well, this past weekend I went to DC with plenty of money in case of emergency. Sometime between Friday morning and Saturday, though, $100 disappeared out of my account with no rhyme nor reason - the bottom balance just changes with no explanation. When I got back, I printed a report from Microsoft Money and skipped school and work to go to my bank and try to fix the problem. The woman with the bank literaly yelled at me in the lobby because, apparently, it's my responsibility to bring in my bank statements even though I haven't received one since I went to banking on the web. When I told her that I was there now and really needed this problem fixed, she yelled at me some more. I filed a complaint with the main branch, but honestly I feel that it was not taken seriously.

When I got home yesterday, I called the main branch - who WOULD talk to me even though they have no power to do anything - and learned that my art agent had pulled $187 out of my account. He wasn't supposed to do that yet, not until I'd received a phone call from him, and so I had that to deal with on top of the negative numbers the bank was causing. I wanted to contest the payment, but the employee told me not to, that I should call my agent. I did call him, but apparently that was to no good because today the bank just charged me $150 in overdraft fees. Now I'm so in the red that my paycheck, of which I only get twice a month, will be more than swallowed whole... and I've got to pay car insurance, phone bill, buy groceries, pay for child care, and get gas so I can go to school this week.

I called this morning to get the fax number so I could contest that charge and the employee would not even give it to me. He said it had to be 'assigned' to someone and that the department that does that wasn't even open yet.

I've had enough. I get nothing but the runaround, and I've missed school and work trying to do things during THEIR convenient hours even. I want this bank examined federally. I know I'll never get my money back, and that's fine because I'll never bank with this bank again. However, last I checked laundering money was fraud. And now I'm going to lose everything, literally lose everything, because of it.

Kat

Fernandina Beach, Florida