It’s a big no-no for banks to take money out of customers’ accounts in $20,000 increments. State Farm Bank recognized this fact and says it has refunded all the mistakenly zapped money and will refund all overdraft fees.

From Phil at State Farm Bank:

Thanks for all the input and clever comments (many were quite good! – some, ouch!). However, we want you to know our customers’ accounts are now ALL corrected — and we apologize for any inconvenience this unintentional computer error may have caused some of our customers.

No question — State Farm Bank will pay any overdraft of other fees our customers may have experienced as a direct result of their accounts being unintentionally debited. And, again, we’re sorry for any hassles you may have experienced as one of our bank customers. We’ll be in touch soon to tell you how we plan to make it right.

Just so you know, the error was quickly discovered and actions taken immediately to reverse the debits. About 80% of the accounts were corrected within hours of us learning of the coding mistake. The remaining accounts had the debits removed as soon as was possible — in most cases the next day or two.

After the note, the State Farm PR rep concluded with “We’re already hard at work to see that this type of temporary glitch never happens again.” I was hoping he’d throw a “we’re taking it seriously” in there, but no dice.

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