Consumer complaint received 2018-01-10
Company: PNC Bank N.A.
State: MI
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Managing an account
Sub-issue: Fee problem

Complaint:
Greetings, My wife and I for well over a decade have had several accounts with PNC ( formerly XXXX XXXX ) bank. We have our mortgage with them, as well as a home equity loan, a Visa Credit card, and my wife has her checking account there into which her pay check is deposited. I also have currently what is known as their " Virtual Wallet '' savings account which is attached to a debit card. To put it mildly, PNC makes a good amount of money from our household with interest charges for the past decade. And we pay our bills on time. 

Here is the problem I am having. A few years ago, I had a standard savings account with PNC which is attached to a debit card. I am un employed, so the balance for my personal account was always low, usually under XXXX dollars at any given time. I mainly used that account for basic household items. A few years back, PNC started charging a monthly service fee for savings accounts that had less than a {$500.00} dollar a month average daily balance. 

When they started doing that a few years ago, I called PNC to complain, and a PNC customer service representative suggested that I close that account, and open up what PNC calls a " Virtual Wallet '' account, which was a new program. She said that if I did that, there would be no service fees, because PNC saves money with the " Virtual Wallet '' accounts, since they are paperless, and no hard copies are mailed to me on a monthly basis. She said the reason why PNC created the " Virtual Wallet '' accounts, was for folks like me who did not have much money and can not afford these fees. So I said GREAT! I closed my account, and opened up the virtual wallet account and everything was good. No more service fees on the new Virtual Wallet account. And I did not care about not getting any more paper statements because the balance was so low anyway, and I was able to electronically download the statements from their web site if I needed any. 

The problem now, is that PNC has gone back on their word. Last month, they started charging a {$7.00} monthly service fee, on the new " Virtual Wallet '' accounts! Yesterday, I received a {$7.00} charge. So for the past two months, I had {$7.00} service fees billed to that account. The most recent XXXX dollar fee brought my savings account into a negative balance. 

I called PNC to complain about this. To PNC 's credit, the customer service rep did refund the two {$7.00} service fees. HOWEVER, when I asked her if she could please stop charging the account the monthly fee from now on, she said she can not grant that request, because the customer service representative told me that this was a final decision made by PNC management several months ago, that it would be highly unlikely that PNC reversed their policy on this, and that if my balance on that account ever falls below XXXX dollars a month, I would still be charged that XXXX dollar fee from now on. 

The Customer service rep did acknowledge that the Virtual Wallet Accounts used to have no service charge, but that has changed, and management decided to also add service fees to the Virtual Wallet accounts. So I asked her what is the point of the Virtual Wallet accounts? They after all were created to offer no charge savings accounts. No answer on that. 

It seems like they are taking advantage of people who have low or no income. I also asked the PNC representative if they could make exceptions for folks like us, who have several accounts with PNC. She also said no. 

So the PNC Customer Service rep asked me if I wanted to file a complaint and I said yes. So she filed the complaint, issued me a complaint number for the complaint about the above as described. I asked her if I would receive a letter as to the decision, and she said no. She also suggested to me that even though she is filing the complaint for me, it will be a waste of time, because she seriously doubted management would make a policy change. 

Thank you for your consideration.

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief