Rob writes:

I was the recipient of an international wire transfer into my Netbank Checking Account for $1000 EUR (about $1400 US) on 2007-08-08. After I noticed the amount didn’t post to my account, I contacted Netbank and the sending bank in Spain. The sending bank generated a multi-page “proof of transfer” document and indicated the money had been transfered. Netbank never got back to me. This began the 7 month nightmare of dealing with an inattentive bank in the middle of it’s being seized by the FDIC that continues to this day.

Pictured: CEO Arkadi Kuhlmann perched atop his Harley-Davidson in the ING-Direct company lobby.

Before Netbank was closed by the FDIC, I had contacted them over 10 times via phone and email, and each time I was either told that the matter was being looked into, or my research request had been “accidentally closed”. Each time, the CSR was friendly, but unable to help in anyway other than request me to re-send documentation via fax. The last day Netbank was answering their own phones, the CSR indicated that she had “no idea” what they were going to do with the overwhelming amount of open tickets and complaints because, as far as she knew, most of the people were not going to be working on these problems the next day since they were closing their operations.

Since then, I have been dealing with ING Direct who took over the deposits for Netbank. In order to research my request, apparently the ING CSR’s have to refer the matter to one of several “Netbank research agents”. The friendly ING CSR I spoke to today for 45 minutes indicated that she couldn’t do anything but ask that I re-send all the documentation again since, despite dozens of contacts, requests, and re-faxes of information to various numbers on my part, no agent has left any documentation in my account to indicate they are working on my complaint or even that they have received any of my documentation.

Here’s my request to ING Direct: I simply want someone to get back to me to resolve this matter. I’ve been extremely patient and understanding considering the extenuating circumstances during your acquisition, but there is no excuse for your continued lack of communication and apparent disinterest in resolving this issue. If you value your customers and their money, when you lose some of it, you have to do better than this.

Sincerely,

Rob
Los Angeles, CA

That stinks! Try calling 302-255-3005. This is supposed to be the number for Barb, the secretary to ING Direct CEO Arkadi Kuhlmann. One reader says that after having a horrible time with ING Customer service on a Netbank mortgage issue he found this number and was actually patched right through to the CEO, who was reportedly, “very helpful.”

(Photo: Chris Mueller)

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