Consumer complaint received 2015-10-09
Product: Bank account or service — Checking account
Issue: Problems caused by my funds being low — 
Company: BB&T CORPORATION (VA)

We have had a checking account with BB & T for the last 22 years, and we are seriously considering moving our accounts to another financial institution that will hopefully not employ the same bait and switch techniques. We value long standing relationships, and it is the only thing that has prevented us from moving our account thus far but our frustration with these practices are pushing us to consider switching our accounts to a new financial institution. 
It seems that since the new financial protections were put in place for consumers that restricts financial institutions from collecting or racking up arbitrary fees, that our bank has instituted a new way to collect these fees and revenue they have lost that are equally arbitrary and at a minimum are performed in a cloak and dagger fashion. 
When we notice through online banking that our checking acct is running low on funds to cover checks or payments that we know we initiated but that do not yet appear to have been submitted to our account, we drive immediately to our local BB & T branch with cash in hand to deposit into our account. When we arrive, we always first inquire with the bank rep and verify that there are no " returned payments '' noted on our account. We then immediately deposit the cash that would then cover those payments. We then would notice repeatedly that when the bank performed their reconciliation processes after midnight of that same day that they would then first report a payment from a company was submitted and returned that same day and that they returned the payment to the submitter and charged a {$35.00} fee to our account and they would then go on to reflect on the next reconciliation line that they received the cash deposit made earlier that day " after the returned payment ''. I have spoken to bank reps repeatedly re this discrepancy between what we are told by their bank rep that no payments had been submitted and returned at the point of us making that cash deposit and then their coming back to us after their after midnight reconciliation process that indeed a payment had been submitted and returned that day and that they then state to me that it was submitted and returned " before '' we made the cash deposit and that the {$35.00} fee was deducted from our checking acct. This unfortunately has happened too many times for it to be a one off innocent error, and appears to instead be a new bait and switch technique for financial institutes to continue to recoup the arbitrary fees they had been supposedly prevented from recouping through the new consumer protections put in place. Very few times the bank rep was kind enough to deposit back the fee because many times it was the same rep I had originally spoken to when I was depositing the cash to cover the payments that I then spoke to later when I noticed this bait and switch technique and that the outcome did not comport with what she had advised me initially. But there are numerous fees that had not been credited back to our account under the same scenario, and this new bait and switch technique appears to be a new way of doing business for our bank.