Consumer complaint received 2024-05-24
Product: Checking or savings account — Checking account
Issue: Managing an account — Problem using a debit or ATM card
Company: AMERIS BANCORP (GA)

On Monday, XX/XX/XXXX, I noticed 2 fraudulent charges of {$230.00} each were pending on my Business Account. At that time while pending, the transaction showed as Account 2 Account ( XXXX ) charges. Once they posted a few days later, they appeared as the following : XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX I disputed those charges that same day with XXXX. 

Was told they were debit card purchases made on 2 different debit cards - All other check card purchase posted on my account as Check Card Purchases but not these two, which was odd to me. The merchant was XXXX. Both debit cards that was used were still in my possession, they cancelled cards and sent us new ones. Was told to callback at end of month for an update. 
Initially I was told that there would be an investigation that would take anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months and getting our money back provisionally would be a decision made by the bank branch where the account was established. 

On XX/XX/XXXX Spoke with XXXX- was told new expected date of resolution was XX/XX/XXXX, which is totally unacceptable since we as a business would not be protected by XXXX XXXX, and given a provisionary credit. Which means my small business would have to go without over {$400.00} of our operations capital. 

On XX/XX/XXXX My partner and I called Branch Manager XXXX XXXX ' direct line, she was not available, left phone number was told I'd receive a callback. I got a callback XXXX said she would try to get case resolution expedited and a potential partial provisionary credit On XX/XX/XXXX, We had to call XXXX back because we heard nothing from her for 6 whole days, she informed us she had no real insight into the fraud case, and she didn't have the phone number for that department and she could only email them. She never heard back on her requests for the expediting nor the provisionary credit. XXXX told us she couldn't see notes on our account but informed us that the fraudulent transactions were tried more than once with wrong expiration dates before it was finally let through on the 3rd try. We believed that should have flagged as fraud or suspicious and the bank should have tried to contact us to verify before approving the transactions. 

On XX/XX/XXXX spoke with XXXX again @ XXXX, he gave me the dispute case numbers ( XXXX & XXXX ) XXXX opened the dispute cases- 1 for each transaction- which it should have been encompassed in one case in XXXX XXXX opinion Was still being told the expected date of resolution would be XX/XX/XXXX I asked about notes on the account that I could get a transcript of and was told that the above was all the notes they could see. 

I questioned the 2 attempts made with false information before the 3rd attempt which they let go through, XXXX says he's seen it happen where people enter the wrong information by mistake so it's not going to automatically be considered fraudulent because of the multiple attempts At least 2 subsequent calls were made but no resolution in sight. I was then told because it was not a XXXX XXXX used that is why the investigation wouldnt conclude until XXXX. The constant overdraft fees were refunded. But to this day, the bank has never reached out to me but the 1 time XXXX called me back. Since the beginning of this dispute we have called over XXXX times with only 1 callback from the bank regarding this fraud case. We have received no further updates or contact from the bank and at this point feel as though our money will never be returned to us.