I had to take some time to let this all sink in. If I had written this a few hours ago I would have been fuming, flames jumping from the pages. With the advent of a new day, I’m up early (2 am) and I’m still groggy but I’m resigned about what occurred.

I’m going to go through everything step by step, just to show how patient I have been through all this. I was reluctant to set up direct deposit because by bank, Chase, has hit me with a number of overdrafts over the past few weeks. I wrote them off as being my fault, because I miscalculated, at least I thought I did, the times they were processing funds into my account. Silly me figured that electronic transactions between banks happened within one day. Silly me for thinking if I’m personally at the bank depositing a check it would get posted that day. No apparently they will post the information when it is convenient to them, meaning when it is guaranteed to generate an overdraft charge.

On Wednesday April 7, in the morning, I wrote a check for my rent. In the past it had taken three business days for the check to show up in my account. With the last paycheck it seemed to have taken two days. Because of stupidity on my part (yes I’m still blaming myself for this because if I don’t I only get angrier) I didn’t get the money deposited in time. On Wednesday I knew with direct deposit the money would be in the account on Friday.

Friday April 9 at 12:15 am I checked my bank account. It showed the direct deposit check was in the account and the rent check hasn’t cleared. It wasn’t in any of the records inline. I felt pretty good. Luckily I take good news with a grain of salt. At 8 am I checked my account again. I was surprised to see my account was a little lower than expected. I figured the rent check might be in there but since I checked a few hours earlier and it wasn’t on the list, plus what I had for the rent didn’t match up with the final number on the account, I was a little concerned. When I went into the detail area of the account, imagine my surprise when I saw the rent check was in there and I was hit with an insufficient funds fee and the kicker of that was the date showed was Thursday April 8. Also imagine my surprise to see the direct deposit check, which was in the account 8 hours earlier, was now pending. So in the span of a few hours a direct deposit check, which to me, and I guess being a layman in the field of banking I don’t quite get how this would happen, should have been cleared since it was from a payroll and was direct from one bank account to another bank account, went from available to pending sending my account underfunded for the rent check, yet conveniently hit my bank account with another overdraft.

Because of other things I had to do on Friday I went to the bank Monday, bright and early, to get an explanation from the bank employees about what had happened. I have been in customer service before, so I knew how hard it would be to convince a low paid, low level worker, who has been programmed to say the company line, that the information on their computer was incorrect. I knew yelling wouldn’t get my point across so I was determined to stay calm and explain as best I could the case at hand.

Thankfully I did maintain patience because the woman I talked to, and I hope she wasn’t doing this on purpose, but it seemed impossible for her to comprehend what I was telling her. I made sure to give her exact dates and times of what I observed. I made sure to separate the words deposit and check when talking about what happened. First, when she pulled up and printed up the information, she referred to the overdraft from a month ago. She then fell back on the old ‘the programming does not make mistakes’ clause. I told her I know it was hard to prove and I know the next time to take a screen shot but my story was correct.

I was proud of myself for maintaining my calm but my story wasn’t processing in her head, because like any good company drone she was coming at the issue from her inside knowledge of the bank. I even asked her a few times to explain the deposit policy, because I gave her examples of when I have been in the bank and put a check in the account and it wasn’t available until the next day, or times when I would put a check in the ATM and some was ready, and the confusing episode when I put cash in an ATM, the sign clearly said any money put in after 9pm (I was there at 9:45pm) wouldn’t be available until the next day but the full amount was available immediately to me. I guess I was asking too many questions because she did the fallback of quoting company lines instead of answering my questions.

Finally someone who I think was the bank manager, she never identified herself, came up asking to assist and before I could say something the woman I was talking to tried to explain what was going on, getting it completely wrong in the process. I lost it just a little but I cut in and gave a quick recap of the real story. This new woman I talked to kept trying to tell me when the time frame of deposits worked and finally I made it clear to her that the deposit was in the account before the check was in, despite the information shown on her screen and especially the date of the check being a day after I gave it to the rent department of my apartment.

Now the contrast of this is a check I wrote for my car payment, something that was done on Friday still hasn’t shown in my account, which I checked at 1:30am today, however an electronic payment I made to the power company just arrived in my account, which was also done on Friday was on the account put shows pending. In lieu of recent events it wouldn’t surprise me if the car payment shows up in my account on Wednesday but is dated for Friday, thus giving me another insufficient funds fine.

So after explaining my story and thinking the second woman understood what was going on, she told the first woman I dealt with to give me a card with the 800 number to some department to explain more about the deposit information, but she would go ahead and credit my account for the insufficient funds fee. I was mad I had to go through thirty minutes of hoop jumping but I felt things ended well. I got home, checked my account and NO credit had been done. I started to steam and I was ready to drive back to the bank but I decided to wait until today, just in case it was another case of the electronics taking forever to process something. Well, the credit isn’t in the account.

The only way I can explain it now is that this woman lied to my face to get me out of the bank. She said specifically she was going to credit the account and she didn’t. If there was an issue with it she never contacted me by phone or email to explain it. What I don’t understand is if she willingly lied to me, when I was being so detailed on my information, did she think by getting me out of the bank I wouldn’t come back once I realized she didn’t do what she told me she was going to do?

With some other issues that arose yesterday, I’ve decided to refuse to play by the rules as laid out. I’ve had too many situations in the past few weeks where people, in defense of their corporate masters, have put unnecessary roadblocks into simple things. I said that I’ve had this but I’ve run across a lot of people in the past few weeks that have had similar incidents. Speaking for myself I can’t let this action continue without making sure I have myself protected. I mean when I see information on a screen then the bank changes it, what does that tell you? It tells me never again to I trust folks who speak for the corporation.

Quick Update:
I just came back from the bank. I was prepared this time, bringing along my iTouch and recorded the whole conversation with the bank manager. I waited for ten minutes while she made the change she told me she did yesterday. I walked out of the bank with information she took from my account supposedly showing the credit was done, which it wasn’t on the paper. Once I got home I checked my account and saw the credit was there and, here’s a surprise, it’s pending.

Funny thing, when I talked to the manager I told her what I found out about the check, which was somehow I gave the check to the rental office on a Wednesday and it got cleared on a Thursday. I have never heard of a check going that fast, especially without having the pending status and the whole warping time so that it could be put in on a Friday but show it was a Thursday even when other bank things were in on Friday but showed pending. She informed me a lot of places have some sort of rapid clearing system for checks. She even mentioned the power company was a place that had it. I didn’t even feel like getting into an argument pointing out the power company check I gave to them on Friday just showed up in my account today and has pending on it.

Just keep touting the party line without thinking.