Consumer complaint received 2021-07-15
Company: CITIZENS FINANCIAL GROUP, INC.
State: PA
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Problem caused by your funds being low
Sub-issue: Overdrafts and overdraft fees

Complaint:
I hold three accounts with Citizens Bank -- a personal checking account, a business account, and an estate business account. In early XXXX, I had a vendor refund me {$3000.00} for a deposit I'd made over a year prior. When I requested the refund, I forgot it was to the business account, and didn't realize that account had been charged off due to having gone to a negative balance, as I was not using it much anymore since the estate had been fully probated. 

Since the estate account was closed, the refund went into limbo. I called the bank a couple of times but was told rather rudely and dismissively that once an account is closed, they no longer track any attempts to deposit to it, and that the refund would bounce back to the vendor, and I should resolve it with them. I attempted to do this, but the vendor had no such indication of the refund returning to them. I went back to the bank, and was repeatedly told by various employees that they were not in the practice of keeping records of attempts to deposit to a closed account, and that I should take it up with the vendor and leave them out of it. The vendor continued to insist they had no sign of it bouncing back to them. 

The following week I went into a branch and insisted that an employee dig deeper, given the amount of money involved and the fact that they must be able to track some indication of what happened when the attempted credit was made. Sure enough, the employee learned the bank did, in fact, have record of it -- and had already deducted the roughly {$200.00} to compensate themselves for the negative balance in the estate account at the time it was charged off -- a negative balance consisting largely of overdraft charges. 

Because I had requested the refund in the first place due to a personal financial crunch, my main personal account balance was now also running very low. I asked the bank employee if they could quickly deposit the remainder of the {$3000.00} into my primary checking account, and he requested internally that that be done. However, he received a response that they would have to issue me a check and mail it to my home. I was promised on XX/XX/XXXX that it would be sent immediately. The following week, I did not receive the check, so I followed up, and was told it would be the next week. The next week came and went, and nothing arrived, so I checked again. This time I was told there had been a " computer glitch '' that caused the check to never be created, and the process would have to be initiated again. The employee requested internally that they either do a direct deposit or XXXX the check to me, but was declined for both. So I was promised I would receive it in the mail promptly. On XX/XX/XXXX, I still had not received anything, and asked again -- the employee I'd been dealing with at the local branch looked into it again, and was told again that there'd been some mishap, and the check had never been created. 

All this time, due to my low account balance in the first place, my account went negative, and I received an inordinate number of overdraft charges totaling several hundred dollars ( I will get you a grand total when this is all over ). I asked the employee if these charges would be reversed, given they were all the result of their own series of errors and complete inability to get me my money in a seven-week dragged-out time frame -- even after they wasted no time in deducting their own {$200.00} from it for the prior overdraft charges. He told me it was unlikely they would refund more than perhaps one of them. 

As of today, I still have not received my money, but have been charged hundreds in overdraft fees. It is not a complicated issue to resolve, and feels like they intentionally slow-walked it to cause more overdraft fees to be incurred. I do not believe this is lawful behavior by a bank and wish to see it investigated.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation