Consumer complaint received 2021-06-25
Company: CITIZENS FINANCIAL GROUP, INC.
State: PA
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Problem caused by your funds being low
Sub-issue: Overdrafts and overdraft fees

Complaint:
Citizens Bank levied 3 overdraft fees against my checking account on XX/XX/2021 ; they were {$37.00} each, for a total of {$110.00}. 

My actual balance, in terms of completed/posted transactions, was NEVER negative ( until the fees themselves, of course ). The eNotice for the overdraft lays out the rational, and it comes to the conclusion that I overdrafted because of temporary authorizations. Technically other transactions are accused of being the overdrafted ones, but again, the posted balance was never negative, so the 'negative ' temporary balance was calculated by including these temporary authorizations. These temporary authorizations never completed - they completely dropped off ( 1 business day later, conveniently .... for the bank, that is ... ) ). I knew they would drop off because I had not authorized any such payments to be made. If they HAD completed, I would have demanded a refund because, again, I had not authorized any payments to be made. 

I called and explained the situation, and the first low-level rep I spoke with was understanding but unable to help me because of the system. I asked to be escalated to a supervisor, who also could not help me ; he was not sympathetic and defended this practice of the bank. 

Every level of the system is set up to incur the maximum number of overdraft fees. There are multiple issues outside the scope of this particular case - the way the bank cynically re-sorts transactions in order to maximize the number of discrete transactions it can accuse you of 'overdrafting ' on, the disparate ways incoming and outgoing transactions are handled, etc. 

But most relevant to this specific case is the absurd way pending transactions are handled. I am not in control of pending transactions - various merchants are authorization-happy and make ridiculous authorization checks whenever they feel like. I have no insight into when such an authorization check will be made, nor can I cancel an authorization once it has been made. I can't even see what date it will expire on! The particular authorizations in this case were made on XX/XX/XXXX and somehow lasted until XX/XX/XXXX! I don't think even the merchant can be blamed for that length of time ; that is the fault of Citizens Bank. So the bank gets to say that temporary authorizations count against my balance, and the bank gets to determine how long the temporary authorizations last ( and keep this information secret ), and the bank gets to charge me overdraft fees on the basis of how they've secretly determined temporary authorizations work? I understand the first part - you can't allow infinite temporary authorizations because of the obvious potential for problems. But the latter two are completely unfair to the consumer. You can't even plan without information on when temporary authorizations will drop off, and I can't see any scenario in which uncompleted authorizations should participate in triggering an overdraft fee. If they complete and cause a negative balance, THAT is when you've overdrafted. Not when an imaginary number that has little correlation with what money is actually coming into or leaving your account is transiently negative, an imaginary number that the bank has full control over and demonstrably applies cynical algorithms to in order to maximize the number of fees they can extort from the financially struggling.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation