Consumer complaint received 2022-01-06
Company: U.S. BANCORP
State: WA
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Problem caused by your funds being low
Sub-issue: Overdrafts and overdraft fees

Complaint:
On the evening of XX/XX/XXXX, i checked my account, and my account had both a positive posted account balance, and a positive available balance. And this balance reflected all current pending charges. At approximately XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX, i checked my account, and saw that a deposit i was expecting in the amount of {$520.00} had appeared on my account, and my available balance was now higher, including this deposit amount. As a result, i submitted a transaction to transfer {$400.00} to my XXXX XXXX account. I then went to bed, and when i woke up i checked my account again, and saw all of these overdraft charges. 
These overdraft charges all resulted from a hold being placed in the amount of {$490.00}. This hold amount included the {$400.00} transaction i had just made, as well as several small transactions that had already previously appeared in the available balance. As you can see in the image below, it shows in red the new available balance after each of the transactions that resulted in overdraft charges. After the last one, the available balance reached the amount of negative - {$380.00}. This clearly shows that had i not submitted the {$400.00} transaction on the morning of XX/XX/XXXX, none of those transactions would have been negative. 
Please look at the posted accounted balance in the image below at the end of XX/XX/XXXX. After all transactions posted on XX/XX/XXXX, i still had a POSITIVE posted balance of {$110.00}. The only thing that would lower my available balance from this posted balance would be pending transactions. As you can see in the images, the only other transactions that were even in process at the time posted on XX/XX/XXXX. Those transactions, aside from the {$400.00} in question, were : {$7.00}, {$28.00}, {$16.00}, and {$50.00} ( not including the overdraft fees, of course ). Those transactions all combined total {$100.00}. So even if every one of those four transactions was pending on XX/XX/XXXX and lowering my available balance, they would not have been sufficient to make my available balance negative. This proves that if the {$400.00} transaction had not occurred, it is impossible for my available balance to have gone negative. There were absolutely no other transactions pending at the time to affect the available balance. 
My complaint is simply that had US Banks mobile application not showed that deposit, and not included that deposit amount in my available balance, i absolutely would not have initiated that {$400.00} transaction transferring money out of my account. I emailed one of the bank employees with whom i had previously conversed, and then headed to the branch to discuss the issue. On arrival, this bank employee said she had already called their back end support line and discussed the issue. They said the problem was that I initiated the {$400.00} transaction a few hours too early. That although it showed the deposit funds being available at XXXX, they were not actually available until XXXX. So as soon as I initiated the {$400.00} transaction, it lowered my available balance into negative. 
Should a bank consumer not be able to rely on that banks software showing a deposit has having occurred, and showing the funds as available. How can I, or anyone else, do business if we can not rely on what it is showing us. US Bank seems to not want to acknowledge that their software has an issue that between XXXX and XXXX ( i assume the difference between my time zone and eastern time zone ), their system has a problem accurately reflecting posted and available balances. 
And a whole separate issue is that my posted balance at close of XX/XX/XXXX was positive. Yet i had four overdraft charges that resulted from a transaction that didnt even occur until XX/XX/XXXX. So even if US Bank didnt want to accept responsibility for their software erroneously showing a deposits funds as being available, there should have been one overdraft for not having sufficient funds to cover that {$400.00} transaction on XX/XX/XXXX. Not four overdraft charges for transactions that posted one day prior. 

I spoke with the branch manager, who was completely unwilling to help resolve the situation. I likewise spoke by phone with a support representative, who also was unwilling to do anything to help.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation