Just sent this letter to Citizens Bank. Not holding my breath for any sort of meaningful response, but what the heck…
Dana Drago
Vice Chairman, Retail and Business Banking
Citizens Bank
One Citizens Plaza
Providence, RI 02903
Dear Ms. Drago,
I am writing to bring to your attention a serious deficiency in Citizens Bank’s Internet banking application.
For your information, I have been a Citizens Bank account-holder for a number of years. My checking account, home equity loan and home equity line of credit are all held by Citizens Bank. I am a “Circle Gold” account-holder.
When a payment or transfer is entered into your Internet banking application, a confirmation number is issued. According to your on-line documentation, “This identifying number should be used if you have questions regarding a transfer.” I assume that this number may also be used to prove that a transaction was entered, in case it is somehow lost by the application after the customer entered it.
Unfortunately, the confirmation number issued when a transaction is entered is not subsequently displayed on the screens which display pending transactions. This is a relatively minor problem.
A bigger problem is that when a customer edits or deletes a pending transaction, not only is the original confirmation number not displayed, but no new confirmation number is issued.
This means that if a customer edits or deletes a transaction through your Internet banking application, and that change is lost or processed improperly by the bank, there is absolutely no way for the customer to prove that he or she made the change.
Since your Internet banking application issues neither paper receipts (obviously) nor even email receipts for transactions created or modified through the application, I hope you will agree that it is critical to customer confidence that every action performed within the application has associated with it a confirmation number that the customer can record and provide to the bank later should there be any issues.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Kamens
This is what happened to me for using Citizens bank. I had enough money in my accoung and 3 debits went through although I made a mistake in my calculations and I was off $2.15. They went and charged me 3 overdraft fees. and i’m like what there was enough money to take care of 2 of the checks that went through and I should of only have gotten 1 overdraft fee. but you do you know what they actually do. They just take the totals of checks and debits for the day and subtract it from your account and if you don’t have enough money they charge you overdraft fees pre transactions for that day. they really know how to screw citizens don’t they. any normal bank should of taken the money out and then on the 3rd transaction there wasn’t enough money then they should of ran an overdraft. I SAY [bleep] CITIZENS BANK.
Sorry, but as much as I hate Citizens Bank and think they look for every opportunity to screw the consumer, I have little sympathy for you.
Due to the recent changes in federal overdraft regulations for debit transactions, the only way you could have been charged any overdraft fees at all is if you had recently explicitly agreed to allow the bank to charge them to you. If you don’t want to pay any overdraft fees, tell the bank that if you don’t have enough money in your account, you want your transaction to fail, not result in an overdraft.
Better yet, don’t use a debit card at all. Debit cards benefit no one except the banks. They are an incredibly consumer-unfriendly product. Get yourself a credit card, use that instead, and pay it off in full at the end of every month. You can get a credit card that gives you back cash or points and benefit even further as a result.
Note that you can overdraft your account even if you don’t do enough debit transactions to go below $0. Some debit transactions (e.g., gas stations) put a temporary hold on your account in addition to the temporary transaction. That hold doesn’t go away for several days, and it reduces your available balance. This is another reason why debit cards are an incredibly bad idea.
If you don’t think you can exercise enough self-control to not overspend with a credit card, then either tell the bank to stop allowing overdrafts on debit transactions as described above, or get yourself a prepaid debit card that won’t let you spend more than you put into it.
Banking Nightmares, Citizens Bank = BAD
I have been using Citizens Bank for the last 10years, have several accounts and home equity loans and I have had huge share of problems with them. They closed my account on April 2 and next day charged me $74 overdraft wee. This bank so greedy that can not respect they long term customers. Kate Smith, customer service supervisor completely unprofessional and she did not know how to treat good and loyal customer. She is working for North Caroline customer center. her manager is Paula Hnanan. Too bad for bank that will lost all my business and hope jobs for people like Kate Smith
Got back this answer a little over a month ago:
I sent back the following:
It has been over a month since I sent the response shown above, and I haven’t heard anything back.