It’s so funny how math works! In the case of Consumerist reader Sam, he got a glimpse of the delightful ways math can be manipulated when comparing his USAA online money manager balance with the bank’s internal ledger. At one point, his balance was thousands of dollars different between the two.

He writes:

USAA’s online “money manager” is completely messed up, and apparently they’re not telling anyone about it so I’m hoping you can help get the word out. I’m not talking about not liking the product, I’m talking about your online ledger being completely inaccurate – in my case to the tune of thousands of dollars. If you are relying on the bank’s ledger, you could be working off of faulty data. I was able to get a copy of my actual internal ledger and holding it side by side with what the website is showing me is going to make my head explode.

He provided images of the two different accountings (which, of course, we aren’t sharing here), and indeed, in the internal ledger, his account starts off thousands higher than it does in the online version. At one point, to correct the discrepancy, a credit he received is turned into a debit, you know, just to even things out. As he says, the ledger just made up a new balance for him. Math!

All of this is because of a pesky little bug that USAA and US Bank aren’t apprising their customers of, and instead, they’re just waiting for someone to get upset so they can go in and manually fix it.

After spending a lot of time on the phone with both USAA and US Bank, I finally talked to someone at USAA who knew what was going on. Apparently their website is full of bugs, shows inaccurate ledger balances, shows debits as credits and vica-versa, and apparently just makes up balances. I was informed that they are aware of the bug and have been for several months, and that they have to fix all accounts effected manually. Worse, they have chosen not to notify anybody of the problem and they have chosen to continue using their new money manager software rather than rolling back to their previous software until this bug is fixed. 

The representative told me that they expect to have this issues fixed by May 20th and it could be affecting anybody west of the central time zone. If USAA members are having trouble on their accounts, they will need to call and have their accounts added to the IT ticket # 4347297 to have them fixed. 

As Sam says, it can be a huge problem for anyone who uses their online balance to make important financial decisions to have such discrepancies. And really, customers should be notified that such shenanigans are going on, instead of sitting back and waiting for complaints.

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.