Consumer complaint received 2020-11-28
Product: Checking or savings account — Checking account
Issue: Managing an account — Deposits and withdrawals
Company: TD BANK US HOLDING COMPANY (NH)

To whom it may concern : I am writing to express concern about how TD Bank presents its transfer limits. The bank lies to its customers in a way that makes it more likely for them to receive additional fees for balances dipping below a minimum, because customers can not make deposits as listed in the interface. 
After logging into the TD Bank web interface to make an interbank transfer ( " With my accounts outside TD Bank '' ) one must first select the source account, so the interface knows if the desired transfer is inbound to or outbound from TD Bank. Then, next to the box for the Amount, a " View Limits '' link appears. Clicking on this shows the per-transfer, daily, and monthly limits for both inbound and outbound transfers using next-business-day and 3-business-day transfers. It also shows the amount remaining today, though that amount is not as applicable when scheduling a future transfer. 
Unfortunately, these amounts are regularly WRONG. Upon initiating a transfer within the limits presented by this interface, a bank customer can receive an e-mail stating that TD bank had cancelled the transaction because the amount exceeded TD Bank 's limits, even though re-checking both the limits shown and the customer 's history of inbound or outbound transfers within the past day and month shows the amount to be under the limit ( also under the per-transaction limit ). The inverse is also true : sometimes transactions for amounts greater than the stated remaining limit can go through just fine. 
The only way to find out the actual limits are to call in to the bank and spend about an hour on the phone. For example, I had an INBOUND transfer from XXXX  XXXX XXXX scheduled for XX/XX/XXXX for {$8000.00}, which was initially schedule just fine but then cancelled by TD Bank due to TD 's limits. The published limits say that the inbound per-transaction maximum is $ XXXX, with $ XXXX daily total limit and $ XXXX monthly total limit. This is very clearly presented in the interface presented to the user only AFTER logging in to their individual accounts and AFTER indicating whether this is an inbound or outbound transfer. After receiving notice of the cancellation on XXXX XXXX XXXX, I called TD Bank and reached XXXX. After 45 minutes on the phone, the conclusion was that the actual monthly limit is $ XXXX instead of the {$30.00} shown. The new transfer, when combined with the only other inbound transfer within the past 30 days ( though not in the same month ), exceeded this secret " monthly '' limit, and " monthly '' in this instance secretly meant a rolling 30-day period instead of each month, even though it means " monthly '' in other cases such as limits on the number of withdrawals from a savings account. 
Note that the limits imposed by the other bank from which the funds were to be transferred ( a premium account ) are much, much higher, limited only by the funds in the account which were more than enough to cover the transaction. 
They explained that the higher limits are shown to me after I've logged in because those higher limits apply to some other customers, and the determination of eligibility is made based on banking hisotry at the time a customer signs up for that portion of online banking, which in my case was likely when the account was brand new, so I was not eligible for the higher limits and nobody at the bank can change that. They also explained that nobody at the bank could change their interface to give customers true information about the limits which applied to them ; they think lying to their customers is just fine. This is not the first time an issue like this has happened and the Bank continues refusing to fix it. 
As a result of the limits shown being different from the actual limits in effect, TD 's design choices have blocked me from being able to cost-effectively figure out the deposit limits which would have allowed me to fund the account to be just above rather than just below their threshold for charging maintenance fees, and they have been charging these maintenance fees. When I log into their website to try to send a Secure Message about these issues ( in the Transfers category ), I first get the error that I can only send a message about internal transfers between accounts, and even when I select internal accounts with more details in history and description, I can not submit the message " We apologize for the inconvenience. Thanks for your patience. Please try again in a little while. '' This is quite frustrating. 
I don't think the bank should be allowed to lie to customers about the transfer limits it imposes and I definitely don't think that strategy should be considered a legal basis to extract additional fees.