wherein Liz has fun at the bank

[edenfalling]

On Monday, I received a rather odd communication from my bank: namely, a nearly illegible carbon copy of a debit memo drawn on my checking account, which said, "Deposited check into wrong account. Spoke w/ Elizabeth Culmer Landlady's Name." The listed amount of the debit was my monthly rent payment.

I was confused but not yet worried.

On Tuesday, I got a Notice of Uncollected or Non-Sufficient Funds, which said the following: "This notice is to inform you that your account is overdrawn as a result of the items listed below. The items marked "RT" have been returned unpaid and all other items were paid without sufficient funds in your account. The fee for processing is listed below. A positive Current Balance indicates items were posted against Uncollected Funds," which is pretty close to gibberish as far as I am concerned. The "item listed below" that caused the problem was my rent check. The overdraft fee was $35. And my current balance was -$98.32.

I was even more confused and starting to worry.

On Wednesday I got another Notice of Uncollected or Non-Sufficient Funds, again charging me a $35 overdraft fee, and telling me my current balance was now -$387.78, because of a check to pay my monthly credit card bill and an ATM cash withdrawal.

Clearly something had gone Very Wrong.

So today I went to my bank en route to work and found out what had happened.

It turns out that when my landlady went to deposit my rent check, she filled out the deposit slip with MY account number (taken off my check) instead of her own account number. (I haven't the foggiest idea how a person could do that accidentally, but apparently she did.) The teller noticed the error and wrote a debit memo to transfer the money from my account to my landlady's account. Except she neglected to write a note explaining her actions, so when the check and deposit slip made it to the bank's proof department, a worker there also noticed and corrected the error.

In other words, my rent got paid twice and nobody told me.

I got that straightened out -- the bank put the money back into my account and refunded the overdraft fees, since they were charged in error. On Monday or Tuesday, though, I need to go back and make sure this hasn't been reported as behavior that would negatively affect my credit score, because if I end up suffering because of three other people's stupidity when I had not, in fact, done anything wrong, I am going to be pissed off. And rightfully so!

...

Banks are generally very careful and accurate, but when they make mistakes, they tend to be doozies.

(About the only bright spot here is that the bank does seem to have paid my credit card bill instead of bouncing the check. Now that would have led to real trouble.)

Comments

[askerian]

... wow. It's a REALLY GOOD THING it all got sorted out. Way to fuck you over, otherwise. O_O;

[edenfalling]

Yeah. It's one thing to overdraw an account because I've screwed up and forgotten how much money was in there. It's completely different (and infuriating!) to get overdraft charges because other people screwed up and yanked nearly a thousand dollars out from under my feet, so to speak.

[askerian]

*petpets* I'm sorry you had to spend time worrying about it and talking people into fixing it, it sounds like a really frustrating, worrying time.

[lady_songsmith]

The amazing part here is that you got them to refund the overdraft fees. In my experience with banks, choirs of angels could come down from on high and sing "It was your error, refund the fee" in 7-part harmony and the bank would STILL not give up its grasp on that money.

[edenfalling]

My bank is surprisingly reasonable about things like that. I think it comes of being a local bank -- they are intensely focused on Tompkins County and the immediately surrounding region rather than on trying to turn into Bank of America or something, and are therefore highly interested in keeping good relations with their customers so they will have a good reputation in the community.

[karit.livejournal.com]

Yeah, speaking as a bank employee, that mistake was a doozy. Great that the teller caught it, but oh, you really need to explain when you've caught mistakes so no one else thinks that catching the mistake was the mistake.

On the good side, it shouldn't affect your credit score at all. Savings and checking generally don't at all because they're not credit, but I suppose it's possible? In any case, the bank is the one reporting it so even if they've reported something as late, they'll just report it correctly the next time they check in. But still, it wasn't a credit account affected so you should be fine.

[edenfalling]

Oh, that's a relief! I think I will ask anyway, though, just to be on the safe side. (I have had bad experiences with credit card companies and credit scores before -- i.e., apparently people asking about my credit score and deciding I am creditworthy enough to send card offers to somehow counts against my credit-worthiness. I think ratings companies live on a different planet.)

[karit.livejournal.com]

Yeah, unfortunately too many credit checks affect your score negatively. People worry about that and I understand it theoretically--a lot of credit checks all at once might mean you're opening up a number of accounts but it also might mean you're rate shopping. I don't think anyone understands the reasoning completely!

But you should be absolutely fine. The only record of it will be at your bank and they'll also show the refund due to bank error. I can tell you that bank errors happen a lot! One of the first things I was told was that we do our best to get it right every time... but if you mess up, everything is fixable.

I'm glad I relieved some worry! There's nothing worse than panicking about money issues