Consumer complaint received 2024-06-03
Product: Checking or savings account — Checking account
Issue: Closing an account — Can't close your account
Company: ARVEST BANK GROUP, INC. (AZ)

I received a letter around XX/XX/year> confirming my request to add basic overdraft protection to an account I opened at Arvest Bank. I initially thought this might be a phishing scam since I had never heard of Arvest Bank and certainly hadn't opened any account with them. I was going to ignore it but phishing is usually done through avenues that don't cost money so I looked them up online and discovered they are real, so I called to report the fraud and close the account. 
I called the next day and asked to speak with someone about a fraudulent account. I told them I did not open an account with them and I wanted it closed. They were less than helpful. They said that normally they could just close the account but that since there was money in the account they couldn't just close it. But that I shouldn't worry bc it was already flagged as suspicious and was scheduled to be closed on XX/XX/year>. This did not make me happy as I wanted it closed now. I asked to speak to someone in their fraud department but before I was transferred to give me the account # as all the letter had was the last 4 digits, they wouldn't do that without me giving them my SSN. This does not make me happy, now that stupid bank has my SSN associated with this fraudulent account. I was put on hold but after waiting more than XXXX minutes I chose the option to give them my number for a call back. 
After XXXX hours without a call back, I called again and was transferred to someone who then asked me what bank I was calling about. This made me very mad and suspicious as I had only called one bank. I asked them who they were and they said they were XXXX and were a third party handling fraud for a number of banks and if I wanted help I needed to tell them what bank, so I did. After several minutes of back and forth she then told me she didn't know why I was transferred to XXXX as they work with credit cards and not checking accounts and then we either got disconnected or she hung up on me. I was in a poor coverage area so it's possible we got disconnected but it seems unlikely. By this time I had been trying to take care of this for over XXXX hours while also trying to work so I had to let it go and hope that what I had done so far was enough. 

Apparently it wasn't as I received another letter on XX/XX/year> informing me that the bank had determined that the relationship was " no longer mutually beneficial '' so the account would be closed on XX/XX/year> and that I needed to make deposits to cover any outstanding withdraws. So I called them again today XX/XX/year> and after waiting on hold for over XXXX minutes I spoke to someone who informed me that no fraud claim had been filed and she really couldn't close the account either since she works in the back of banking and she doesn't have that access, that if I had spoken to someone in public customer service they could have helped me but that she could submit the fraud claim to flag the account as fraud. So I did that but also said I wanted to speak with a supervisor as I wanted the account closed today. We'll see if someone actually does call me back. 
It should not take more than a week and hours on the phone to report fraud to a bank. This bank behaves like some fly-by-night shady company and I would not trust them to tell me if the sky is blue.