If you have online access to your account, check it ASAP. Though the CSR might not see it in their system, you might be able to see it in your login (I know, they should be tied systems, but trust me in that somehow systems that should be identical many times are not). If you see the $400 phantoms on there either download your account info, if you can, or take a screen-shot of the image as proof.

Wait, so you had money randomly appear in your account, didn't question it, and then spent it after they removed it? If they took money you had deposited into the account, removed it, and then billed you for overdrafts, then yes, they'd be at fault since they stole money from you. But, it looks like here that the money was added and then corrected, but the additional amount was relied upon for purchases. Sounds like the same "don't spend money you don't have" advice would apply here (or at least until you resolved what it was and that it would stay there). Sorry, but I question every amount added or deducted from my balance until it clears (exception with checks for rent, since they are a large even amount that I keep close eyse on).

I busted a bank on a similar thing a few years ago. Once I figured out what they were doing, I beat them at their own game, turned it to my advantage, then changed banks.

Screw em. Your best bet is to go wotha small, locally owned bank. You will save more in the bogus overdraft fees then you will pay for using out of network ATMs.

I think this is one of the main reasons why I have a 'print to PDF' program so I can record any weird events like this without worrying about keeping track of random papers around the house.

You can find a few that are free off the internet. Hope things turn out good for you.

In addition, people should be aware of how the bank processes money with your account. they usually work large to small, so you get hit with fees for the last 5 items at $10 each instead of the single largest at $100 instead.

@SOhp101:
Cute PDF works great.
Been using it at home for several years.

Could the $400 have possibly been added to your account by BOA to cover overdrafts? My bank covers overdrafts by transferring money into my checking account from my savings ... it shows up as a transfer online, but when I call to check my balance, it's reported as a regular, old deposit. Maybe the $400 was just to cover a balance already below $0.

Dunno.

Sorry to be negative, but it seems like now that we have online and phone banking, a lot of people don't take responsibility for keeping a check register anymore. For example, let's say Jane writes John a check in May and doesn't subtract the amount from her balance. Then, in June, Jane checks her balance over the phone, they tell here there's money in her account, so she pays a stack of bills or goes shopping. Then in July, John finally gets around to cashing the check Jane gave him in May, it bounces, and Jane's account is overdrawn. Jane can blame John all she wants about hanging onto the check for 2 months, but it's ultimately Jane's fault for not keeping track of transactions that may not yet be reflected online or over the phone.

Maybe this isn't the case with the OP, but she seems a little cavalier about her recordkeeping. Never trust that the bank's got your back. And she should have investigated that $400 before she spent it.

Don't count on the bank to keep track of it all for you.

@gypsychk: But then, wouldn't BoA be able to tell him that instead of saying they know nothing about the $400?

I also think he should have made sure the money was from the lawsuit but BoA isn't free and clear of guilt either. Why didn't they call him about the error? He might have found out his balance was wrong before overspending.

Oh crap, sorry, he should have made sure.

When I was with Wells Fargo their online access was totally inaccurate, I still believe that it was set up to intentionally go all over the place so you really didn't know how much money you have. Sure I should keep a check register, but I mostly do debit card purchases and both my old and current credit unions online access is always accurate. If you ask me they did it on purpose to reel you into bouncing some checks. I always hope thats not the case, but these MegaCorporations are crazy about screwing the customer for a buck.

I finally dumped BofA b/c of their outrageous overdraft charges and other sundry annoyances. It's pure robbery that they let ATM/Debit charges go through when there's not enough $ in your account to cover it, and THEN charge an overdraft. Last I checked, computers have been handling simple addition & subtraction since, oh, at least, the late 90s.

They do have one manager in the Burbank area - (Linda Roderiguez - you go!) who is fantastic and knows what she's doing, but all in all it's a rotten company.

I went with a credit union (First Entertainment Credit Union) in LA, and have never been happier! Every time I drive past a BofA, I'm full of glee b/c I don't have to deal with them and am giving my business to a smaller, more deserving company.

I had something similar happen to my account at BoA but on a much smaller scale. I logged in and noticed a $0.02 charge for eBay India, so I immediately ran to the nearest BoA and told them my account was hijacked. They told me it was a pending charge and not an actual charge (yet), and it was probably a transcription error that would correct itself (which it ultimately did). Currently there is no record of this action anywhere on my account since it was never completely processed. Whoever programs their system must think it's funny to add other people's credits and debits to your account.

Also, seperately, I was charged a fee of $5 for no reason. I talked to a teller who told me the bank manager would call me immediately to rectify the situation (never happened). I filed a complaint with the BBB and got my money back along with a bullshit excuse (supposedly I changed account types, which I did 2 weeks AFTER they charged the fee).

Balance. Your. Accounts.
Don't play the float, EVER. Don't spend money you're not sure is in in the account, that's what credit cards are for (please don't howl that credit cards are evil, eat babies and impale kittens... they have to be managed responsibly like the rest of your financial life but a reputable card doesn't spend your credit without your help.)

To the people thinking that a print-screen PDF of the screen when they look at their account carries any legal weight, I'm guessing you're wrong. It might help in a discussion with a representative of a bank, but it would be too easy for people to edit such documents or create them of whole cloth, the bank's lawyers won't be impressed.

If your employer paid you $600 and your account was empty before the paycheck, keep your spending within the $600. Not rocket science... not even calculus.

Unfortunately, most people don't "keep track" of their finances (which does include 'mysterious deposits')... Those who don't investigate "why" their balance is not in the expected amount, are literally asking their banking institution to do what they please.

From time to time, banks do make errors. But as illustrated above, usually not in an individual's favor. My advice? go for an executive email carpet bomb. (and maybe try traditional letters too)... Make noise, and try to prove beyond a doubt that this was a bank error, and you deserve full compensation.

.....I've had mystery money show up, and subsequently disappear in my Compass account, too. Fortunately, I do balance my checkbook, AND I keep $1500 in there that I don't show in my register, and I never spend. That covers little math errors, either on my part or the bank's. Getting half a percent interest on that $1500 is well worth the peace of mind!

It's like some of you just scan the story and jump to conclusions based on some predetermined position.

- She explained why money showing up wouldn't be unusual.

- She explained the order of events

- Clearly the money existed at some point or they would not have allowed the 9 purchases that showed up as over drafts...

I'm not saying there is no chance that she made a mistake or had too much faith that her balance reflected... her balance. But why in the world would you simply side with the bank and make her out to some idiot that cant handle her finances.

None of you (or myself included) know all the details or exactly what happened, but im pretty sure assuming the bank is right and she is wrong is a less reasonable approach.

I weep for Bank of America.

This episode highlights why most banks levy monthly service fees on low-balance checking account users. To pay for BoAs time and effort dealing with this NON-ISSUE.

She had a mysterious deposit appear. She spent it -- and admits as much. Now she wants to blame the bank for her own actions? The nerve of that woman. The simple answer is to not spend other people's money.

Oh, and that bit about the lawsuit money sounds shady. The erroneous $400 just happened to exactly match the amount of her lawsuit money?

@thisaintsweettea:

"- Clearly the money existed at some point or they would not have allowed the 9 purchases that showed up as over drafts..."

It doesn't matter if the money existed. It wasn't hers and she had no business spending it. Because she did, she should have to pay every single NSF.

When banks get stuck with customer errors like this, they raise rates on all of us.

Accounts can be goofy. A few years ago we discovered our bank account had $2600 extra in it. Apparently a teller had misapplied someone else's deposit into our account. We told the bank, who denied there was a problem. After investigating it, they applied it to the correct account. What bothered me is that in the meantime, this other person would have been justified writing checks against their "balance."

The point is banks do make mistakes and keep on them until you get a clear explanation.

K.

@thisaintsweettea: I agree with your first two points, but not the third. They'll let you overdraft until the cows come home and take the $19, $39, or $59 for each one. There's really no incentive for them to not cover the charges, so they almost always let them go through.

@Rectilinear Propagation: D@MN!!

she!

she, she, she!

@GearheadGeek: This has nothing to do with float. She was told by the automated system that there was a $400 deposit in addition to her paycheck and now they're saying they have no record of it.

cakesandsteaks: Your account might have been part of a growing trend for bank account thieves to try out randomly generated bank account numbers and test them out with a small transaction. The subsequent $5 taken from your account might have been an attempt to take small amounts of money out of your account without you noticing (after the initial trial deposit succeeded). However, you need not be alarmed necessarily because you thwarting their attempt may have stopped it for the future, or they may wait a few months or even a year to try it again and hope it goes unnoticed.

And for Jenny, the first thing that came to my mind was that maybe the $400 deposit was a clerical error (wrong bank account #?) that showed up for a day and was quickly corrected so that no record of the credit nor debit would be in the system. If that is the case, you unluckily checked your account during the small window before it was corrected. Just a guess tho.

ok, here's what you need to do: you need to press the issue of the $400 & get them to acknowledge its existence. whether or not it was actually yours, if you can get the bank to admit it, then you have grounds to get your o/d fees reversed.

good luck with that. it is easier for an ant to move a mountain than it is to prove that a bank made an error.

Hey, thats my $400 give it back...they can't find it!

Seriously, one time I used a blank deposit slip from a teller and my money went missing until one day I got a call. The bank deposited it into a church account(using an account number looked up by the teller). Then they credited me, took off 3 return fees and sent apologies(I insisted) to the people I gave bad checks to! When my statement came there was no record of any of this happening.

@klondikedog:
untrue, they would need to contact a third party computer specialist to prove such documents were altered. My friend used such actions against paypal at one point, when they tried to change the documents he had originally agreed to. He won.

EDIT @GearheadGeek:

Sorry klondikedog, wrong reply ;)

untrue, they would need to contact a third party computer specialist to prove such documents were altered. My friend used such actions against paypal at one point, when they tried to change the documents he had originally agreed to. He won.

when I moved from Florida to Chicago I still had BoA but at the time they had only 1 bank in the city and you had to use ATMs otherwise. After they lost one deposit envelope with checks in it, they also did the same "deposit $500 and then take it back out" to me. Since I actually dealt in that very specific number a lot I too assumed it was a regular deposit, not some random money.

I dumped them then and don't regret it, even with all their new banks opening here. Chase has been pretty good since.

Higher Crap-dards

Whether or not Jenny is at fault for not questioning a mystery $400 deposit, it is insane that a bank would charge ANYONE 9 overdraft fees totaling $315 for $159 in withdrawals.

The bank is effectively loaning you $159 at a near-100% one-time interest rate!

@FromThisSoil:

EDIT: Make that near-200%

Chase is jacked up too. I'll deposit my wife's paycheck and 1/3 will be available immediately, then 3 days later it will clear, then 2/3's of it is there. After another few days the final 1/3 of it is available when I think all the money was there and spent already X amount shows up in our account.

Additionally, I accidentally overdrafted my checking once, Chase denied the transaction and charged me a 95 dollar overdraft fee.

@FromThisSoil: Yes, it's awful! In the old days (like 7-10 years ago), they would have simple not paid the check or charge. Instead they cover it and charge you for the "convenience"... you don't even have a choice as to whether you want them to do so or not.

Something like this happened to me at one point - a 500 buck deposit randomly showed up on my Citizens Bank checking account online, so I called to ask where the money came from. They didn't have any record of it, and a couple of minutes later the money was gone again. In my case, however, it actually showed up as a back-to-back deposit and debit on my account...

Banks are weird, man...

@FromThisSoil: Its actually worse than that, its a near 200% interest rate - $159 borrowed and $315 in charges. But I agree that overdraft charges like this are ridiculous, I have been charged nearly $100 for like 2 overdrafts totalling around $30. I admit it was my fault and wouldnt have minded paying the charge, which I expected to be around $10 or so, but should never be more than the overdraft itself... and definitely not 2x or 3x the original amount.

The "monster mega banks" really have you over a barrel if you want easy access to your money/banking - I tried to change banks recently after mine screwed me over on several occasions, there really are no decent options. They know they have you, but this is one occasion where government needs to step in and regulate, at least in a minimum way (say, banking or finance charges may not exceed 100% of the original transaction amount.)

I read up to "I didn't question the random $400 credit..." and stopped. I don't care what I have coming or going but if I see any amount of random deposit in my account I will question it and most importantly NOT SPEND IT. Whenever I see a "random" activity in my bank account I will immediately call customer service. Although online banking does not tell you details right away of most transactions, if you call customer service they will probably tell you who put the deposit, where, and when. Another unrelated note, who goes around not knowing what should be going on with their bank account? I pretty much have it nailed as to what transactions should be going on in my bank account and never have any discrepancies.

This happens to me constantly. Money will appear and disappear - I'll have a negative balance one day and be several thousand dollars richer the next. My conclusion is that online banking is FUCKED.

All I currently do is balance my checkbook. But aside from chiding people about the necessity, isn't the bank obligated to tell you roughly how much money is in your account? You know, ACTUALLY in your account? It seems to be that when we go looking for an account balance, we should actually be getting that balance.

Also, I don't get were the overdrafts fees came from? Were they random or did she actually spend the money? If she spent the money, wouldn't she have been overdraft whether the extra $400 was there or not?

@Lula Mae Broadway: I think you're right that it's more common for banks to enroll customers in overdraft protection -- but if wedid not have it, our overdrafts would trigger insufficient funds fees (bounced checks). Bounced checks actually cost more because there are fees on both ends.

My job is processing checks and deposits for a big big bank. Let me tell you that there is an entire world of check processing that most of you wouldnt believe. If someone deposits a check at the branch and gets a reciept, that literally means nothing except the bank recieved the check. If you don't bring younr own deposit slip with the bank account already imprinted on it, the teller wrties it out by hand. Now I process 2300 items an hour between checks and deposit slips. Think about how fast that is... I could easily type in a wrong account number on to a deposit slip and have the money deposited in to the wrong account. The bank will figure out my mistake %99 of the time before the customer does, but if they don't, it might be a few days. I haven't even dented the surface with how many steps are in check processing, but if you think that it happens at the teller, you are dead wrong.

The teller is the bottom of the chain. The don't do any real banking. They are there for customer service.

It's entirely possible that the tellers won't be able to see the $400. We had similar systems in the past - instead of reversing a transaction we could literally erase it from the account history.

The records are there, however. There should be a daily transaction record available that would show the day the money went into her account, as well as the day it was reversed. It might take some work finding it, especially if she isn't sure of the date it first appeared, but it can be done if you can find someone who knows where to look.

Basically, she needs to escalate this until she can find someone familiar with their processing reports who can verify the transaction. She's still at fault for not verifying where the funds came from (it's all on the paperwork she signed), but if she's polite and sympathetic about it she can probably get them to reverse the overdraft fees because of their error. She needs to be persistant without getting angry or threatening. That is the surest way to get them to tell her "Sorry, nothing I can do about it."

Last summer, the credit union I've been with since I was 2 y.o. managed to do phantom withdraws on both my and my husband's savings account -- multiple times. They admitted the 3- and 4-figure deductions were their fault and ultimately credited the accounts, but not after we had to jump through hoops:

a.) proving the deductions happened (the tellers couldn't see them on their end

b.) getting them to cover the overdraft charges we received as out regularly-scheduled bills weren't able to be covered.

c.) getting them to reimburse the fees they charged me for NSF and not-enough-money-in-your-account-for-your-account-type.

At least if we'd had phantom deposits, I could have just not spent the money.... having phantom deductions is a pain in the posterior. If I hadn't had exceptional experiences with this CU for the past 30 years, I would have taken my accounts elsewhere.

I forgot to close my italics... sorry!

I worked for BofA 11 years prior to changing careers. One of the several jobs I had with them was in a department that helped other associates figure out mysteries just like this. So with that knowledge, here's my best guess:

The $400 was likely a memo credit (an intra-day credit that has yet to hard-post) made by an employee in error. These memo credits are immediately available to spend, and will show up in your available balance if you inquire about your balance via phone, online, or in person. If the employee who placed the credit realized later that same day that s/he made a mistake and deleted the credit, it would never have hard-posted, and thus there would be no record of the money ever having been in her account.

Again, no way of knowing for sure, but this makes the most sense with the facts given.

As for the overdraft fees? Every account is assigned a confidential amount, based on numerous factors (account history, length of banking relationship, number of NSFs, etc.), that the bank is willing to risk taking a loss on by allowing the account to overdraft. That's probably what happened here.

@AnnieGetYourFun:

It's entirely possible that your account is close (numerically) to another who prints their own checks and deposits. We have issues where customers will either misprint or print with bad ink, usually causing the items to reject as No Account Found, but sometimes they hit another customer's account. The bank may very well be aware of it and be working with that customer to fix the issue, but sometimes there can be hundreds of outstanding checks. This would explain why it's being corrected so quickly.

And if it's a BIG customer they may be too frightened of driving them away to force them to fix it. If you request, they should be able to trace the transactions and find out if this is, in fact, the case. They won't legally be able to tell you who it is or what their account number is, but you would at least know to close your account and open another.

@SOhp101:
@crnk:

Thanks for the PDF writer tips, you two. Cute FTP looks like it will come in handy for a lot of things.

Apologies if someone has already posted this rhetorical question, but why in the hell do people continue to bank at BofA? I'm that close to saying their customers get what they deserve through the sheer ignorance of their decision.

I recently deposited $506 into my BofA account and when I got home, transfered it online to another account. The balances looked correct so I logged off. The following morning, it appeared that the transfer hadn't been made. So, thinking that I had messed up, I transfered the $506 again. Next day, I had an overdraft on my account. I was told by a CSR that due to their computer problems many transactions did not occur the evening of May 9th and that they were completed the following evening. So both of my transfers went through and I was in the red. They proceeded to refund the overdraft charge and corrected the transfer, but if I hadn't called and been angry, I'm sure they never would have let me know it was their error and they would have been happy to collect the $35 overdraft fee.

@acambras:
@GearheadGeek:

I think that part of the problem is that consumers are...: Amen to that. I don't normally get all biblical, but this is the sort of usury that made Jesus go ballistic. You know, according to the Jesus video they advertise late at night.