I was alerted to an in-person cash withdrawal from my checking account about 24-hours after it happened. The transaction details on my account indicated that it was a teller transaction (an actual person walked into a financial branch of the institution), and an e-mailed customer “how was your experience” survey happened to give me the exact branch location and triggered my knowledge of the event. Not all of my funds were taken, but 1/3 of them were.
Now initially, I believed that someone had somehow stolen my identity, pretended to be me and was able to extract the funds from my account. I immediately froze my card, called the bank’s fraud department and let them know that it showed a teller transaction and that person was not me, and was advised to file a police report and freeze my account. Which I did, encouraging the officer to check video evidence as soon as possible in case I needed to freeze all of my other financial accounts and have a new license issued, truly thinking someone had defrauded me boldly at a bank.
I am still pending resolution and investigation, but I visited the bank in person and spoke to the manager. The manager handled it poorly. After initially confidently and in a demeaning fashion insisting that it would be impossible for the bank to make an error of that kind and that I had to have withdrawn the funds, I asked if I could review the video from the day of the transaction with the manager or be given information about the withdrawal slip that was filled out, or display myself to the teller whose name was coded to the transaction. They actually told me the bank had no video cameras, and when I pointed to the very visible video cameras, they changed their tune to “the manager cannot actually access those cameras, a central agency does.” After two hours there, the current resolution is that I open a brand new account, scramble to change my bill payments for the month into the new account and wait for the bank to decide whether or not this was me (which they say could take 60 days). I’m on day 3 of taking off of work to call banks, police department, visiting the branch, changing all of my information and payments — over what could be a teller error. It seems that if that was the case, I’ve lost 4 days of my life and up to 60 days without my cash and the teller will receive a 5 minute “retraining” reminding them to be careful. Now, I don’t want some careless person who had a bad day to be penalized, but I no longer feel secure or confident in this bank or their handling of my situation. Is there anything else I can do? Is this a common occurrence? I have to find or reallocate funds from another source to compensate for the funds that have been taken, and the entire process has been stressful. I can find no information on the interwebs about money being extracted from someone’s account by a teller error, only money being deposited erroneously into someone's account.
Am I legally allowed to view the security footage or withdrawal slip as someone from the fraud department claimed? What questions can I ask to verify that my debit card and identity have not been stolen in other ways? First I felt victimized by a mystery criminal, and now I feel like the bank is also “circling the wagons” against me and is intentionally hiding information from me about what happened, while holding my funds. I have an officer investigating my case, but in my area, this will be a low priority issue. And I feel like even if it is resolved after waiting a month, there will be no real repercussions or changes, except to me — with stress and complications from trying to repair the damage.
ETA: I am in the USA.
Submitted October 26, 2018 at 03:59AM by RedheadRiot https://ift.tt/2OPwAGZ
