Consumer complaint received 2023-08-29
Product: Checking or savings account — Checking account
Issue: Closing an account — Company closed your account
Company: ALLY FINANCIAL INC. (MA)

We recently ( XX/XX/23 ) fell victim to a scam artist resulting in our withdrawals at multiple ATMs to pay toward said scam. This was traumatic, embarrassing and hurt us financially. We reported this to police and Ally, our bank. We followed all steps and procedures advised by Ally, who stated they would investigate. Two weeks later, we noticed our checking account was closed, with no advanced notice. We called Ally, and were told investigators had terminated Allys relationship with us. They closed all accounts without notice, on the last week of the month, immediately before mortgage, credit card, loan payments came due. They did not even give 30 days notice to mitigate the damage that would predictably occur to us. They snail-mailed the checks with the cash from said accounts, thus locking out any rapid access to our only liquid assets when all payments came due, potentially causing long lasting credit damage, financial damage from late credit card payments, missing loan and life insurance payments, not to mention buying food and school supplies as its also the first week of school for our daughters, while scrambling to get funds into another bank, which involved breaking into retirement savings. If Ally flagged us as suspicious with the national bank XXXX, its possible we may have issues opening accounts with national banks in the future. We do assume they flagged us as having suspicious activity. This despite giving them the contacts, names, incident numbers of the police involved in our case. In fact, this was a rare case where one of these officers directly witnessed the scam occurring in real time, in person, and who could corroborate we were the victims of the scam, not the perpetrators. Ally was informed of this on not one, but two separate phone calls with their fraud department. Allys investigators did not bother to speak to the police, or spend more than two weeks looking into this ; they simply summarily closed all our accounts without notice, causing more and longer lasting harm, financial and emotional, than the actual scammer to their previously loyal customers. Apparently this is all legal, and consumers have no recourse other than file a complaint to regulators, which we did. I understand this is not illegal, but it clearly is a terrible way to treat customers you claim to support and value when they are going through a traumatic event. We called a third time, requested they investigate further, that we would willingly submit to a thorough review if our records and finances, but never heard more other then being told all decisions are final. We turn to banks to protect our assets, make sure our funds and readily accessible and stand by their customers. I understand people commit fraud against banks and they need to protect themselves. But this needs to be balanced against supporting customers, and not harming them. In this case, they could have verified our account of events with one or two phone calls and spoken to the officers on the ground at the time. They could have given us reasonable notice prior to closure. Instead, our own bank has harmed us more than the actual criminal that scammed us. Ally is not, in fact, your ally should the worst happen and you fall victim to a scam.