Consumer complaint received 2021-08-28
Company: TRUIST FINANCIAL CORPORATION
State: FL
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Managing an account
Sub-issue: Fee problem

Complaint:
This complaint is against SunTrust Bank with regards to their unscrupulous banking practices and to their erroneous fees. SunTrust has become very proficient in charging their customers overdraft fees, and when you call them to discuss the matter you're given the most absurd explanations as to why your account was charged. Over the past year they have charged both my business and personal checking accounts multiple overdraft fees for items that were still " pending '' in their system and had not yet actually " cleared '' my account. I was informed that it's SunTrust 's policy to charge your account an overdraft fee because even though the item was still " pending '', SunTrust considered the money to already be subtracted from your account balance, when in actuality since the item was still " pending '' this would allow the customer sufficient time to make a deposit before the cut-off time on that business day. One of their phone reps actually told me quote : " Well, even though the item is still pending the bank doesn't know if you're going to make a deposit or not, which is why your account was charged ''. What ... are you kidding me? In other words the bank is charging fees to their customers based on the banks assumption that the customer may or may not make a deposit before the cut-off time and before the item actually goes from " pending '' to " paid ''. Therefore what they're doing is charging these erroneous fees based on their bogus assumption that you might not make a deposit. Absolutely ludicrous! When I logged in to their online banking site it CLEARLY showed that I was NOT overdrawn, and did indeed have a positive balance, which you can see in my seven attached screen shots. When I contacted their customer service to explain this I was given an absolutely ridiculous explanation. I was told that what the customer sees online is completely different from what the customer service rep sees, and that I shouldn't regard what I see online as being my correct/available balance. SunTrust has conveniently set up the order in how they process their debits and credits, which obviously allows them to manipulate their customers accounts thus permitting them to charge these erroneous fees. As I mentioned, I have attached several different screen shots from both of my accounts that show that my account did indeed have a positive balance, yet I was charged an overdraft fee because of a " pending '' item. Another thing that SunTrust has recently started doing is processing certain electronic deposits on the following business day, even though the deposit is made before their cut-off time, which is XXXX. I have been electronically depositing my payments from XXXX for more than a year and they were ALWAYS credited the same day as long as I made the deposit before the cut-off time. However, in the past few months those same deposits are now being credited on the following business day so that SunTrust can charge their customers a bogus overdraft fee by saying " Even though you're deposit was made before the cut-off time it actually wasn't processed until the following business day ''. Oh how convenient for SunTrust. Now they've figured out yet another way to charge their customers overdraft fees. Incredible!!! When I called SunTrust regarding this matter I was told by the online banking agent that XXXX had apparently changed the manner in how they processed their payments and that I should contact XXXX to know why. I contacted XXXX and was informed that they had not changed anything with regards to how they process their payments, and that the deposit process was solely based on my banks processing/deposit policies. Therefore this is nothing more than another ploy of SunTrust to simply allow them to charge their customers more erroneous fees. I have attached numerous screenshots taken from my online banking where you will see that I was charged an overdraft fee, albeit my online banking shows that I actually had a positive balance at the time I was charged these bogus fees. This is nothing more than legalized " theft '' and will clearly demonstrate SunTrust 's dubious banking practices.

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