Consumer complaint received 2017-01-27
Product: Bank account or service — Checking account
Issue: Making/receiving payments, sending money — 
Company: KEYCORP (PA)

Since late 2016 Key Bank acquired First Niagara Bank. We have XXXX varied checking accounts and XXXX loans that were transitioned. We 've used Bill Pay systems for many years at First Niagara and other banks, including XXXX, XXXX, XXXX, XXXX. By comparison, Key Bank 's Bill Pay System is antiquated, horrendous and corrupt. The system WILL NOT save preferences on from which account payees should be paid, and WILL NOT permit addition of a comment or memo with an electronic payment not issued as a paper check. The system WILL deduct the amount of a scheduled payment from your account IMMEDIATELY, even though a paper check is usually not delivered to the payee for about a week. Most banks deduct a payment from the available balance when a check clears, NOT when it is issued. But Key Bank takes money out of your account in the interim and you have NO access to the funds that are held by Key bank even though a check has not yet cleared. When a check is UN-DELIVERABLE due to quirky Bill Pay rules about no XXXX in an address field, you have NO WAY of knowing that your payment has been returned to the bank because your balance has been deducted for the amount of the check, but the payee has not received it. So late charges and fees from your payee could be applied. When you receive another bill and find out the payment was never received from Key, they put you on hold to research and inform you the check was returned to Key WEEKS AGO, but you have seen no credit for this returned check to your account balance. What happens if I did not call to ask about the payment? After 3 MONTHS, Key would return the money to my account!!! ( supposedly ) This sounds like Key is stealing consumers money! You need to RESEND a check to the payee after changing the address, and now your account is deducted TWICE for the SAME AMOUNT! Key states that they need to Stop Payment on the check Key has already received back! Should I have been appreciative that they waived stop payment fees? Maybe.. but just a little until a week later when the initial amount deducted from our balance for the undelivered, stopped payment check is STILL MISSING from the account. So a week after calling Key about the lost check we have paid this bill twice, the amount is DEDUCTED from our account balance 2 TIMES, and the payee has not even received a single check yet ... COUNT ON 2 WEEKS TO SEE A CREDIT!!! Because when you call their support team, another rep tells you what the first one did not, that the credit they applied of your own money ( that is still in Key Bank 's hands ) takes 7-10 business days to go back to your account! If they take payments out immediately, why can they not apply a Stop Payment immediately? Probably so they can charge fees unnecessarily if consumers ' balances get lower than some threshold or worse yet, get overdrawn. Deposits are handled horrendously as well. A CASH deposit is NOT credited to your account on the same day it is made - it is pending until one day later. And a check deposit of a large sum was held for 12 DAYS! This check cleared the payers ' bank after 4 days, and after calling to see why the full check deposit was not credited to our account, we were informed that our local Branch manager had put a hold on our deposit, and as he was on a three-week leave of absence, NO ONE ELSE AT KEY BANK could lift the hold on a deposited check until a week later as the check had been ordered to be held for 10 business days by the manager. Other banks in our experience have never handled deposits in such a manner. Key Bank limits XXXX transfers from Key to a ridiculous limit of $ XXXX per day, thereby restricting consumers ' ability to get YOUR OWN MONEY moved to WHERE you need it WHEN you need it. Key Bank 's practices seem fraudulent, bordering on criminal! We 're praying for another takeover by a better bank or will be forced to shop for a new one.