Consumer complaint received 2017-11-05
Company: DISCOVER BANK
State: GA
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Savings account
Issue: Managing an account
Sub-issue: Problem making or receiving payments

Complaint:
I have several issues to report against Discover Bank : 1. I had inquired earlier whether Overdraft protection can be set up between the Savings and the MM account. I was told that there would be a fee to set that up. So, every time, I do Bill Pay, I have to manually transfer funds into the MM account. Later on, I was told that there is no fee. Their system is so archaic that it does not even allow scheduling the transfers between Discover 's own bank accounts. The only option is Transfer Now.
2. One of the IRA CDs at Discover had matured, and I had taken a distribution of the funds to my Discover Savings account. I had tried to set up a Bank to Bank transfer, but there was some problem with the account number, and it had failed. So, I set up 2 Bill Payments to XXXX XXXX to rollover the IRA funds. The checks were supposed to be delivered on XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX. Their bill pay system is extremely clunky. When I selected XXXXXXXX XXXX as a payee, it did not recognize the account numbers that I entered. So, I had to set up the Payee manually with the address and then I could enter the account numbers. Their system does not allow external transfers to an IRA MM account either, so I had to do Bill Pay. 

3. On XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX, their system indicated that the checks had been delivered. When I did not see the funds balance change after a week, I called Discover on XXXX XXXX. As usual, no one had a clue what had happened and why the funds had not been transferred. 

4. Their web support team kept me on the phone for more than an hour, putting me on hold for finding every little detail. Their bill payment is done by a 3rd party  company, and the team could not do anything rather than open a case. They verified that the account number and address were correct, so there was no reason for the funds to have not been received. At the end of the conversation, we came away with the following : a. He would open a case to check why the funds had not been credited through their 3rd party system.
b. He would put a hold/cancel on those checks, so that they could not be withdrawn. 
c. He would send me a check directly from Discover, for the IRA amount.
At the end of all this delay and frustration, I saw that next day one of the bill pay checks has already appeared on my XXXXXXXX XXXX account. I thought those checks were canceled. Since one of the checks had been received by XXXX, it was recorded as an IRA rollover. So, now half of the IRA was sitting in XXXX as a rollover, and the remaining balance was sitting at Discover. They should have sent no checks or none at all, as discussed and agreed upon. 

So, I wrote to Discover and also had multiple conversations over the next few days. Discover kept delaying and held off on giving me a firm response. Because of the uncertainty, I had to hold off on opening an IRA CD at XXXX and lost interest. I spoke to someone called XXXX from Discover IRA on XXXX XXXX, and he said that he would get back to me after reviewing the phone recordings and messages, with their response by XXXX XXXX. When I did not hear from him, I again called Discover and realized that no one had even reviewed my case. I spoke to XXXX from IRA, and he very rudely informed me that there was nothing Discover could do. He also said that there was no 2nd check that Discover had canceled. He clearly had no clue of the case because the system keeps transactional records of everything, and I have proof that there was a 2nd check. 

So, after all this delay, I have lost interest on an IRA CD for weeks and now have 2 rollovers within 365 days, because of the severe incompetency of Discover Bank.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation