Consumer complaint received 2016-03-15
Company: REGIONS FINANCIAL CORPORATION
State: TN
Product: Bank account or service
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Problems caused by my funds being low

Complaint:
This incident started out in XXXX 2016. My wife and I have been Regions customers for over 15 happy years. Recently this all changed with them. We, at the time, held XXXX accounts with Regions bank. XXXX personal checking account, XXXX savings accounts, and XXXX credit account. The credit account was there as an emergency account, never used. Here recently, I noticed when I signed into my personal account online the credit account looked different. One day I signed into the account and noticed that there was a {$25.00} balance on the account. Unaware of the reason for this balance, as we do not use the account, I contacted the main Regions customer service department. I was advised that the balance on the account was a {$25.00} annual fee that is assessed to the credit account. I was never aware of this fee as I had never had a fee in the past but never the less was eager to pay the fee as it is something that I apparently owed to the bank. I inquired as to why the amount was not pulled from my personal account as over {$100000.00} a year is process thru this account. The customer service department advised me that I had to actually go in and make the transfer to the account from my other accounts. The {$25.00} fee was paid as soon as I was aware of the charge and I assumed everything was all good. A few weeks ago I was advised by XXXX that I had a negative impact reported to my credit file. Upon further investigation it was discovered that Regions bank was reporting this account on all XXXX of my credit bureau files as a negative account. I made contact with Regions bank again as I was never made aware of the fee in the first place. I never received a letter advising that the fee was charged, I never received a phone call from their collections department, nothing. I spoke with XXXX XXXX, whom is a manager within their accounts department, and was advised that there was nothing they could do about it and I just had to deal with it. Unhappy with her professionalism, I took to their social media site where I was contacted by XXXX XXXX. XXXX would not reply to my online contact but rather called me to tell me that there was nothing they could do to correct this and again I had to deal with it. Again unhappy with this reply I made contact with the office of the CEO where I was given an email address to send the CEO an email. I sent the email explaining everything that has taken place and I received a letter today from XXXX XXXX ( Customer Satisfaction Specialist ) basically telling me the same thing. He states " since the payment was made more than 30 days past the due date, a notification was sent to the credit bureau. '' After receiving this letter, I made phone contact with XXXX XXXX whom confirmed that their collection department never tried to contact me and they made no effort, other than a statement that I never received, was sent to me. They made no effort to contact me about this and went straight to the credit bureau as shown in the letter. I need some guidance to rectify this situation. I have since closed my credit account as well as both saving accounts. I am currently working to close my personal account with them. As a customer of 15+ years, I feel they have taken advantage of me and my family. They all have advised me that the credit reporting will stay and they refuse to make corrections to my file.

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