Zach’s $100,000 CD with TD Bank he took out on 10/5 was mysteriously showing a $0 balance and no one seemed able to fix it until we told him what to do. TD Bank PR says it wasn’t related to their clusterfunk of delays that started Sep 28. Zach’s experience says otherwise.

Zach IM’d me and emailed me this morning and those six figures jumped out quite plainly. I told him that he should think about filing a police report and then I emailed a TD Bank PR person for him. Here’s what happened next.

Zach writes:

I just returned from the 32nd & Park branch of TD Bank, and I’m pleased to report that the $100,000 has been posted to my CD account. The assistant manager, Angela, made several phone calls (probably over a dozen) after I arrived threatening to file a police report. I had previously met with her on Monday, when she filed a “Vector Request” to search for my deposit. Luckily I was able to present my CD certificate, along with withdrawal and deposit slips from when I opened the account on 10/2 (I opened the account after 6 PM so the slips and CD were dated 10/5). Before this incident, I never held on to deposit slips for more than a day or two, but now I definitely plan on keeping very detailed records of all of my banking transactions.

I first contacted TD Bank on 10/8, when I discovered that one of my CD’s had a $0 balance. They informed me that deposits had been delayed for many customers, but told me not to worry, that my account would be up to date “by the weekend.” When Saturday came and my account was still displaying a $0 balance, I visited the 101 Springdale Rd. branch (Cherry Hill, NJ), as I was home visiting my parents for the weekend. The branch filed a “Vector Request” for the second time (the first had been filed by the first CSR I spoke to on the phone), and told me that it could take anywhere from 24 hours to a week for my transaction to post, but that most of the delayed transactions were posting in 24 hours. I became rather frustrated and informed the manager on duty that I wished to withdraw my funds and close all of my accounts, and she told me that I could close my accounts but would not be able to make a withdrawal from the CD, as it was reflecting a $0 balance. I left and decided to go to the branch where I opened the account on Monday instead.

I noticed that the “Public Relations Specialist” claims that all of the accounts are now up to date, and that my issue was “most likely” unrelated. That conflicts with claims from all of the TD Bank representatives that I spoke to from 10/8 on, who stated that there were many other customers that were still affected. Just today, I spoke with Angela at the 32nd and Park branch, who said that my account was one of “a hundred thousand or so, from Florida to Maine” that was delayed. Later, Larry, who identified himself as the manager for the midtown Manhattan branches of TD Bank, informed me that as of this morning, there were “roughly 1000” accounts in Manhattan with transactions that have yet to post, but that mine had been resolved because it was “moved to the top of the stack.” He said that my delayed posting was likely taking longer than others because it was a CD account, and so the bank had likely determined that it was not as urgent as other customers’ accounts, because many of them need those transactions to be corrected so they “can buy food” and that that didn’t seem to be the case for me. This is obviously a legitimate concern, and I’m certainly glad that the bank is treating these customers as a higher priority.

Larry and Angela offered me a $100 gift card for my troubles (Angela had originally offered the standard $25 gift card before Larry arrived), but I didn’t feel that my lost time and frustration was worth $100, so I decided not to take the cards. I’d prefer to take advantage of the $100 promotion offered by other banks, when I open my accounts there after closing my six accounts at TD Bank.

Again, I thank you very much for your concern. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help, and I hope you’re able to inform other customers that their money is likely not lost, but that the bank may need to pull some strings to have it posted immediately.

Regards,
Zach

I’m going to have to start to use the phrase “vector request” more often.

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