Consumer complaint received 2015-12-09
Company: UNITED SERVICES AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION
State: TX
Product: Bank account or service
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Deposits and withdrawals

Complaint:
On Monday XXXX/XXXX/2015 my wife and I were in XXXX XXXX, Florida closing on a second home ( condo ). We attempted to withdraw {$950.00} dollars in cash from an ATM and while doing so our account was placed on fraud alert by USAA. We have been banking with USAA for about five years. We have XXXX daughters ages XXXX, XXXX, and XXXX. We are tied to their accounts because when we had accounts at XXXX XXXX they were taking large fees each month because they did not have high balances, or real estate. We switched to USAA because this would not happen to them and they could still have checking and savings accounts. Two weeks ago we began the process of buying a condo in XXXX XXXX as a beach home. I took out a XXXX XXXX XXXX loan of {$50000.00} to pay for the condo and to furnish the home. We contacted USAA to wire {$30000.00} to a title company in XXXX XXXX. On Monday while in XXXX XXXX, my wife attempted to increase our daily withdrawal limit from the existing {$610.00} per day up to {$2000.00} per day. After getting {$500.00}, and increasing the limit via the USAA automated phone process and attempting to get more cash for some furniture purchases our account was put on fraud alert by USAA. We called USAA and were told it would be 24 hours before this could be resolved. They told us to use the USAA Credit Card and they gave us PIN to withdraw cash off of their credit card which accrues expensive interest. Since we were sitting in a rented truck at {$100.00} per day we had no choice. Twenty four hours later the hold on our account was still not lifted and we then discovered that it was affecting our XXXX daughters accounts as well. We could not pay our bills, access our funds, buy food, gas or anything, and neither could our daughters. Our oldest lives in XXXX. Our middle daughter has her own life in the same town we live. Our XXXX year old was home while we were in Florida and unable to buy groceries. Twenty four hours later calls to USAA they told us it would be three to five business days before we could get any resolution. They are holding our accounts hostage and will not let us assist in even disputing what is going on as we are locked out of online viewing as well. Another call by me to the Executive resolutions department I was told I should have notified them I was leaving my place of residence to do business. The last time I looked Florida was a state in the United States and not a foreign country. They now say it could be one to two business days to resolve. So now we have gotten XXXX different stories from XXXX different USAA employees. My family can not live this way. They are stopping me from paying my mortgage, buy groceries, gas, and just live. They have all of my daughters accounts frozen and they ca n't conduct business either. They say they sympathize with us, but they have to do an investigation and we are helpless to do anything. We are tied to our daughters accounts because they are young and do not have credit established. Please help us fast as USAA is going to destroy my XXXX credit rating with us being unable to pay our mortgage and our credit card bills. At no time were we notified via phone or email that there was potential fraud. They would not work with us to identify what they believed was fraud. They just put us in financial limbo. This is my money and they say they are protecting us, but wo n't work with us. We used their phone app to increase our withdrawal limit, but still got put on fraud alert. We used what they put in place to do our banking. USAA does not have brick and mortar banks around the country so we must use other ATMs to withdraw funds when needed. There is no fraud and if their was some hack happening they could have worked with us to resolve and not have to wait an unknown amount of time.

Company public response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief