Consumer complaint received 2019-02-14
Company: CITIZENS FINANCIAL GROUP, INC.
State: NY
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Problem with a lender or other company charging your account
Sub-issue: Transaction was not authorized

Complaint:
My problem is with my bank, Citizens Bank, NA, I have a joint checking account with them and have requested and opted out of over draft coverage ; however, the bank at their choice ( see emailed response to me ), can choose to pay bills set up on ach even though there is no money in the account and for which they can then charge me a {$35.00} over draft fee and after every 5 days another {$30.00} for sustained overdraft. This is totally unfair. My other online account rejects such transactions and the vendors will resubmit those ach transactions 5 to 10 days later when there is funds in the account at which time they are covered. That account is with XXXX XXXX  and I love that they reject payments when I don't have enough money. Citizens bank, on the other hand, pays these things and charges me money. They just did this over the past week or so and charged me {$230.00}. This is outrageous! I sent them an secure message to complain and they responded with the following : " Dear XXXX, Thank you for your recent inquiry regarding the Sustained Overdraft Fee. 

Although you have chosen not to enroll in Debit Card Overdraft Coverage for ATM and debit card transactions, your account can become overdrawn by checks and pre-authorized payments.

Every Citizens Bank checking account automatically comes with Check and Pre-authorized Payments Overdraft Coverage. With this service, we may approve and pay at our discretion checks or pre-authorized debits that overdraw your account, and charge you an Overdraft Fee, so that you can complete your transaction and your payments are made. A Sustained Overdraft Fee may be assessed if your account remains overdrawn.

Here is how it works : If your account remains overdrawn for four consecutive business days, on the fifth business day we will charge a Sustained Overdraft Fee of {$30.00}. An additional {$30.00} fee will be charged on the eighth business day if your account remains overdrawn for seven consecutive business days and on the 11th business day if your account remains overdrawn for 10 consecutive business days, up to a total of {$90.00}.

The Sustained Overdraft Fee will not apply when ATM and everyday debit transactions are the only transactions in your overdrawn balance. If your overdrawn balance is reduced to only the ATM and everyday debit transaction balance, we will stop charging the Sustained Overdraft Fee and reset the consecutive business day counter.

If you have additional transactions that are not ATM or everyday debit transactions that are paid against your overdrawn account after we stop charging the sustained fee, the consecutive business days counter will restart at day one and may continue up to the maximum.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please contact us via email or by calling our 24-hour Customer Service Center at XXXX. 

We value you as a customer and appreciate your business. Thank you for choosing Citizens Bank. 

Sincerely, XXXX XXXX. 

Email Team Advocate '' It should not be their choice how and to whom and for what bills I pay. That is my choice. I am going to change banks because of this and close the account, but this really hurts their customers and does not help people who are already struggling to pay their bills. Emphasis on paying my bills, I pay them and decide when to pay them. The bank should only be covering items submitted when there are funds available, especially when the customer opts out of over draft coverage. In addition, they then also choose which bills to return nsf and charge me another {$35.00} to do that, so now I pay {$70.00} per NSF for the ones they return and {$35.00} for the ones they pay. This incident cost me a total of {$340.00} for them to pay 5 items and then they charged me 2 sustained overdraft fees of {$30.00} each and another {$100.00} again for 3 of the original 5 bill paid to return those NSF. 
XX/XX/19 service charge {$30.00} sustained OD XX/XX/19 fee {$70.00} returned items XX/XX/19 Fee returned item {$35.00} XX/XX/19 service charge {$30.00} XX/XX/19 Fee overdraft {$2.00} at XXXX {$70.00} XX/XX/19 Fee {$100.00}, 3 overdraft Thank you. 

XXXX XXXX

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief