Consumer complaint received 2019-07-11
Company: FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF PENNSYLVANIA
State: PA
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Problem with a lender or other company charging your account
Sub-issue: Can't stop withdrawals from your account

Complaint:
I have 2 checking accounts with First National Bank, XXXX, Pa, lets call them primary and secondary, where the primary one has many more transactions. 

At their own admission, upon my investigation into the matter, they violated their own internal policies in declaring my secondary checking account to be dormant last XXXX ( without informing or alerting me ), and then penalizing me {$10.00} a month UNTIL THE ACCOUNT WAS EMPTY and then CLOSING the account ( after they withdrew a total of {$20.00}, which was linked to an XXXX account to receive funds from sales from a book I wrote about 4 years ago ), ALL WITHOUT INFORMING ME OR ALERTING ME despite having multiple contact information ( email, phone, mailing address ) AND their own internal Message Center where they can contact or alert me via my online account, which means that even if none of my contact information was up to date or available they would STILL have been able to contact or alert me through the online Message Center. But they did NONE of these! Interestingly, they did alert me several times, via email, of various other circumstances regarding my primary checking account, regarding changes to my password but which did not involve penalties or charges to my account. It seems that where there might be a penalty involved, such as the $ XXXX dormant account fee, the bank doesnt want the customer to know! This might raise suspicions of profiteering on the part of the bank. 

Anyway, branch manager XXXX XXXX, of the XXXX XXXX branch, whom I visited in his office XX/XX/19, sent this relevant portion of the policy to me a few days later, after I requested : To reactivate an account a customer driven transaction must be processed or customer contact made. Customer contact may be visiting a branch, conducting a transaction on another account, phone or mail contact. An example of a customer driven transaction includes deposits and withdrawals from an account. 

This means that, therefore, my activity with my OTHER checking account would satisfy the condition described above, so that the account that was treated as dormant SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN TREATED AS DORMANT AND SUBSEQUENTLY CLOSED which caused me all kinds of problems and concerns and headache and heartache! Branch manager XXXX XXXX did confirm this in an email he sent me XX/XX/19 : Yes sir, you are correct. 
That should not have been closed based on your activity in other account. 
I apologize and thank you for letting me know. 


Arent there laws specifically pertaining to this? There probably are! 

Another question is : does FNB even have any policies regarding differential use of email and their online Message Center? If not, this exposes a SERIOUS FLAW in how they communicate with customers one that obviously fosters PROFITEERING by FNB!

Theres also the issue of the bank charging a fee to receive paper statements, compared to no fee for online statements, where the fee is more than the cost of the paper and postage, which creates an issue of fairness and transparency. I choose to avoid the fee so dont get a monthly paper statement. I would probably have noticed the dormancy fee on a paper statement and taken action to avoid further fees ( such as simply calling them ). But since I rarely use the secondary account Im of course not inclined to check the online statements on a regular basis at all, bearing in mind Im far more likely to notice something on paper I get in the mail ( which requires no action on my part ) and which is tangible than something that exists entirely in the cloud and which Im therefore inclined not to be aware of AT ALL! 

And whether or not the particulars of a dormant account are in an Agreement wouldnt matter, because even if I had the Agreement taped to my bathroom mirror and read it every morning, I still wouldnt know that it was a year ( or some other period of time ) since the last deposit or transaction! They would have to tell me! Alert me some way! Thats the only way I could know! There was absolutely no due diligence on the banks part to contact me at any time, and calling one phone number is not due diligence because they also have my email address and mailing address, which havent changed since I opened the account over 4 years ago because Ive been at my current residence for over 7 years! 

Branch manager XXXX XXXX deposited {$20.00} into my primary checking account, and offered to restore the checking account that was closed, but it seems that this indicates serious problems at the bank ( such as accounts of other customers treated as dormant ) that need to be investigated.

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief