Consumer complaint received 2023-12-18
Company: BMO HARRIS BANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: CA
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Savings account
Issue: Managing an account
Sub-issue: Deposits and withdrawals

Complaint:
I had opened a Online Savings account on XX/XX/2023 at BMO XXXX Bank, which is a online subsidiary of BMO HARRIS BANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION. I transferred huge amount in a week to this Savings account, thinking it is a good bank. But I was proved completely wrong. 

This BMO XXXX bank has 2 factor authentication to login via username, password and later user has to enter the code received in text message to login to online account. This itself proves that original user is logging in correctly. I tried to transfer {$1000.00} and {$2000.00} separately from this savings account to my External Checking account on XX/XX/2023 and I have initiated, authorized the transaction. But both the transactions immediately went into a review without my permission and 2 days later, my account was locked on XX/XX/2023 and I was thrown out of my account for 10 days. During this period, I could not login to my account at all because of some ridiculous and bad decision by the bank that there was some fraud in my account. In reality, there was no fraud at all in my account. Whenever I call customer service at XXXX I have to wait 1 to 2 hours in the queue which is just bad. When I finally get to talk to them, they also couldn't access my account and they tell me to contact fraud department at XXXX. I tried contacting fraud department 10 times everyday at different times of the day when they are open but no one picked up my call for 10 days and there was no option to leave voicemail. Finally I was able to luckily talk to someone in fraud department after 10 days on XX/XX/2023 after trying 100 's of times. The agent took a look at it, verified me by asking so many questions and finally told that they removed all restrictions in my account and I should be able to transfer the amount now. But when I tried transferring my money to external account, it still mentions now that my account has " AccountFreeze '' restriction and I still can't transfer to my external account. I can't even close my online account. This BMO XXXX bank seems like a scam and are trying to rob the money from me by locking my amount forever in the account. This bank is shady and a nightmare to deal with. I have never felt so disrespected as a consumer and uncared for by a XXXX XXXX. Needless to say, there is a lot of time being lost while I make such calls without much action by the bank. The burden on the consumer in order to transfer their money to external account is unrealistic. 

I am being treated very unfairly and I need my money urgently. I raised multiple requests/tickets with customer service but they are not helping. There is no coordination between departments in this bank. I have seen hundreds of similar complaints online against this bank recently when I started researching about reviews of this bank. This bank shouldn't be allowed to follow this behavior and scam the consumers in this way. I have attached the screenshot of AccountFreeze restriction in my account and also couple emails, photos from this bank mentioning fraud detection, when infact there was no fraud in my account.

Complaints against this bank : 1 ) This bank is not allowing me to transfer my own money to my external account. I want this bank to transfer my entire money to my external account ( of my choice ) immediately without any delay. 
2 ) This bank is not allowing me to close the account, hoping that would transfer my money to my external account. They should first transfer my entire money to my external account without any issues and then once I get my entire money and once I confirm getting the amount, they should close my savings account.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation