Consumer complaint received 2022-08-13
Company: Bread Financial Holdings, Inc.
State: NJ
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Savings account
Issue: Managing an account
Sub-issue: Deposits and withdrawals

Complaint:
Bread XXXX XXXX  has made it almost impossible for me to move my finds out from my savings account. 

This complaint is about how they handled or in fact totally ignored my wire transfer request to move some of my funds. Their outgoing ACH limits are only $ XXXX a day so there is no other practical option but to do a wire transfer. 

- XXXX Just to get the instructions on how to do a wire transfer and to get the form took 50 minutes on the phone. The lady assured me that it will go out next day by 1PM CST if I submit it the day before and they will call me if they have any questions about the wire transfer. I submitted the wire transfer and got an acknowledgement saying the same - XX/XX/XXXX Never got any status update or questions about the wire transfer. So spent another 55 minutes on hold and the lady assured me that the wire transfer will go out today. She flat out LIED to me on the recorded line as it did not go out that day. 

- XX/XX/XXXX Sent them 3 messages via secure chat on the wire transfer request conversation, got no response to any of them - XX/XX/XXXX Spent about 1.45 hours, first talking to XXXX and then a supervisor XXXX. This conversation really opened my eyes to how unprofessional and incompetent they are. First they told me that they were ignoring my wire transfer request because I had linked 17 external accounts in my online profile. They did not provide me any answer what that had to do with my wire transfer request. Then XXXX told me that the manager who is supposed to approve the wire transfer request is working for home, so most probably would have ignored this request. Then when I ask him do they need any additional documentation from me to approve this request, they ask me for proof of ownership of the account to where I was transferring the funds which I provided while on phone itself. Then they asked me to also provide proof of ownership for a totally different account ( XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX ) which I also provided while on the call itself. The XXXX flat out LIED to me and said that you have provided everything we could ever need and it will go out today. 

XXXX evening. Still no status update on the wire transfer request and no response to my secure message. Spent another 1.45 hours talking to XXXX. She empathized but kept blaming other departments, told me she cant do anything at the time. Promised me that some supervisor will call me in the morning XXXX morning. Received no call from any supervisor. Called and spoke to XXXX in an overseas call center who did not know how to get hold of a supervisor. The call went silent after 55 minutes on hold XXXX early afternoon. Called again and spoke to XXXX and XXXX. XXXX was repeating the same exact things that XXXX said the previous day and blaming other departments. This conversation again highlights how incompetent this bank and their security department is. This time they asked for proof of ownership of another account. I repeatedly told them that their website was down currently but they wont admit that. Finally after an hour they admitted that and then asked me to send that bank statement over an insecure email. This is the time when they first realized that they should have asked for this bank and not the XXXX XXXX that they had asked they day before. If this was not bad enough, they also asked that provide proof of ownership of some XXXX XXXX XXXX  account from which I transferred funds on XX/XX/XXXX. This again highlights how incompetent they are as I told them I have never transferred any funds from any bank XXXX XXXX account. For the third time, they again LIED and told me that I have provided everything they might need and it will probably go out today and they will let le know the status. I had to really beg him to please at least tell me the status. Total time spent on this call was 2.5 hours - XX/XX/XXXX evening. Still no official communication about the wire transfer request. XXXX calls me and tells me that they have denied the request and that he is doing me a favor by calling me and telling me that. When I asked him to respond to the secure message and mention that it has been denied, he reuses and says that he can't do that and some " other department '' will reply to me by end of day. It is already way past end of day and so far I have received a single communication from this so called XXXX XXXX about anything related to my wire transfer request. On top, XXXX 's tone totally changed on this call and started justifying all the delays that I had to go through, the same things that he previously said were not acceptable. Total time spent on this call was 45 minutes. 

So I waited 4 days and spent about 9 hours on calls and sending secure message to do this wire transfer and so far no one has even bothered to officially inform me about the status of the wire transfer. The summary is they make it very easy to open an account and move the money in but very difficult to move the money out. And do all that in name of the security even though their security department is so incompetent that they keep mixing up the customer and the accounts.

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief