I recently had my bank test my patience by making funds, from a deposit made on a Friday, available in my checking account and subsequently putting a hold on those funds after I was told they would be available on Monday. Having had my chain jerked before by banks I decided to check my account on the banks website. Sure enough the funds were available so we wrote our checks and made our payments. All was right with the world. On Tuesday the shock came. The Loss Prevention (their loss not mine) department had put a hold on the funds because the signature looked squirrelly. Many of the checks and payments were made to places that have no sense of humor when checks bounce. We started hitting the phone trying to head off as much disaster as possible. The township agreed to swap out our personal check for a cashiers check (the bank made some funds available after we called them about their bad behaviour). Unfortunately the personal check was sent in as well as the cashiers check. Boing, boing, boing!!!! Another Non Sufficient Funds charge. Once the dust settled on this fiasco we approached the bank about refunding the fees. They agreed to refund their fees, but not the fees from the institutions we attempted to pay. "We do not refund fees from other institutions" was the company line. They had forgot that I worked in the Banking and Finance industry for many years. I knew that was nonsense and I told them so in a lengthy letter to their branch manager which contain names, dates and places. I threw every piece of insider information about how banks work that I had. In the last paragraph I mention that I had not contacted any legal institutions or consumer groups YET!!!! I had to hold back something and give them a chance to do the right thing. Which they did. The lesson here is that banks can put a hold on your funds, but they can't lie to you and if they do they have to pay up.
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