Saturday, February 21, 2009

US Bank, First Tennessee and a question

Yes this blog is going to be random for a while. Sorting things out means pulling out the junk and going through it all. So nothing deep or profound for a while. I need to chill a bit first.

It's things like this that have me so frazzled:

We were with this one bank. A large, don't-know-who-you-are-cause-your-just-a-number bank (cou-us-gh cou-bank-gh)and they charged us overdraft fees on a whole bunch of small overages after taking one large one. They could have paid the small ones first and only charged us for the one large one (one $39 fee as opposed to many). This led to months of constantly being over and being charges only to set us back even more. (No kidding this probably cost us close to a thousand dollars) When questioned about this tactic, they said it was a "customer service" so that if the large one were your mortgage, it would be paid on time. Excuse me, you're paying ALL of them and just charging me like you weren't. So what difference does it make if you pay one or the other first? Never mind that when you charge me multiple overdraft fees, you kill me financially so that I can never get on my feet again. Oh hell, I want the world to know. It was US BANK. The final straw was when they did it to my son for a measly 3 bucks. He was at school in East Tennessee and his mail is forwarded. It was 10 days before he found out about it and they charged him a freaking $9 a day on top of the $39 fee! Would not do a thing to help him. So we closed ALL of our accounts.

We then moved to First Tennessee. Now they have been real good to us except for one thing. Their bill pay sucks. When I first tried it, they took the money from your account as soon as you scheduled your payment. So I can't schedule a week out due to the fact that my money may not be in there until the day before! UGH! I get late payment fees cause I have to wait till I have money to schedule the payments, but it takes five days to pay. Okay after a year of licking my wounds from that one, I try again. It says to schedule five days out. So I schedule on a Friday to pay the next Friday with a due date on the following Tues. The money won't be there until the Friday on which I am scheduling the payment, but deposits are supposed to post before the payments right? Well, the money was withdrawn on the correct Friday, the deposit posted after the fact resulting in overdraft fees (this time only $10 each) and the payments were posted FIVE DAYS AFTER THE MONEY WAS WITHDRAWN resulting in another $39 each in late fees. After questioning this, they did refund the overdraft fees, but said their rules clearly stated to schedule payments five days out and they would NOT do anything about them. So I figure they are simply mailing my payments. I could mail my own and get them there on time without having money drawn from my account before the check arrives. They aren't helping me with anything but postage this way and if I am getting late fees everytime, they are way negating that. So I pose this question to anyone who will answer:

Do I change banks again? Or should I give them another chance? I mean, they are all out to screw you right? This is life from paycheck to paycheck. Anybody know of any banks that are fair?

I am forwarding this post to First Tennessee. I'll post whatever they reply. I am so sick of banks running the show. I still want to be fair with them, but USBank had all the time and opportunity to make things right. Stay as far away from them as you can.