Consumer complaint received 2022-03-01
Company: BANK OZK
State: AR
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Managing an account
Sub-issue: Banking errors

Complaint:
XXXX XXXX XXXX - XXXX XXXX XXXX On XX/XX/XXXX {$1400.00} was scheduled per the XXXX website to be directly deposited into my secondary account with the last XXXX digits of XXXX ( Bank OZK ). 

Never arrived to account so I reached out to XXXX XXXX XXXX office for assistance in this matter as I was not getting an answer from the IRS after numerous phone calls were made. 

I finally put a trace out on said amount on XX/XX/XXXX. On XX/XX/XXXX the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX received my request and found that {$1400.00} was sent to an account ending in XXXX ( at Bank Ozk ). The date the letter was completed and forwarded to me was XX/XX/XXXX. 

I had been corresponding back and forth with XXXX XXXX ( a representative from XXXX XXXX office ) in regards to speaking with the IRS to see if they had been returned these funds. The answer was no the IRS had no indication that the funds had been returned to them. The XXXX also had responded back to XXXX stating that they did not receive the return of funds either. 

So with this being said, I have documentation that these funds were indeed put into my account but were not sent back. According to IRS guidelines, they should have been returned. Instead, they were wrongfully used to pay for an accounting error that was made by Bank OZK administration in XXXX XXXX. The reason why I say this is that the account ending in XXXX ( our secondary account ) was closed in XXXX of XXXX. XXXX month prior to the direct deposit of the XXXX EIP. 

Here is an explanation of what happened with our primary account. The primary account ( which ends with the numbers XXXX ) was deemed to be closed by the administration of Bank Ozk in XXXX of XXXX. My husband is a service-connected veteran who had chosen to have his VA benefits direct deposited to this account every month. As of XX/XX/XXXX our account did have a negative balance of {$120.00} but that is all and we could have had this rectified on XX/XX/XXXX if it were not for the banking error that had wrongfully taken place on the first. 

My husbands benefits totaled {$3100.00} and were supposed to be listed as a CREDIT but as my sheet CLEARLY STATES it was treated as a DEBIT -Therefore putting the deficit even higher. 

( They ) Bank Ozk administration sent my husbands VA benefits BACK to the VA then demanded that he pay the debt of the negative balance in the account that Bank OZK had intentionally created. 

Of course, my husband refused. How could he pay for it even {$10.00} when they sent it back to the VA. 

Now the other issue that needs to be addressed is as follows. The {$1400.00} BANK OZK intentionally took ( my EIP payment ) to partially rectify the negative amount that was in the account. How do I know this? 

Well, on XX/XX/XXXX at XXXX am I called the corporate office of Bank Ozk in XXXX XXXX and spoke with a representative by the name of XXXX XXXX female ) I explained the situation and she said that she would contact the ACH department to find out where it was. I never received a call back from her. 

So, I called back the next morning and started to get the run around again but finally put my foot down to get an answer. I called back a third time and XXXX and behold who answered the line it was XXXX the same person I talked to the day before. This was the final answer. The {$1400.00} was in fact used to pay for the deficit that was created by Bank OZK as stated earlier. ( By the way, I thought that ALL EIPs were NOT supposed to be touched by anyone other than the recipient??? ) NO EXCEPTIONS XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation