Our frustrating and offensive relationship with TD Bank deteriorated bank in March when we decided to sell our Florida winter home in Deerfield Beach Florida.
Aware that our Home Owner’s Association’s property management company was incompetent, I called my TD Bank branch and was told that “I had to attend the bank personally as it could not be done over the phone” so I interrupted my morning, hopped into my car and drove to our TD Bank branch on Hillsboro Avenue to inform them that we had sold the property and that no more automatic monthly maintenance fee payments were authorized.
It seemed like a pretty logical and important investment of my time as I dislike having little things plague us after the fact and, as Murphy’s Law says “that which can go wrong . . . will go wrong“.
Upon asking for a manager, I was greeting by a young man who immediately informed me that this matter was something that had to be done by the HOA’s bank, despite the fact that they money was mine, in my account at his bank.
His arrogance was offensive (I wrote about this a while back – just type in TD Bank in the search field on this page to read the details).
Well, as anticipated, the HOA’s incompetent property management company (“Crest Property Management”), who had assured us that the proper procedure would be followed, did not follow the proper procedure and charged us the April monthly maintenance fee of the, then sold, property although we did not discover the error until we arrived back in Canada.
We notified the property manager of the error immediately upon discovering the improper removal of our funds. Just before departing for Canada we closed the bank account as the house had been sold and we would have no further use of an America bank account.
The property manager did not send us the refund cheque that he promised, so I was required to notify the president of our HOA board of directors who immediately said she would look into and remedy the situation and send us a refund cheque, which she did.
Then in June (2 months later) we receive a letter from the TD Bank informing us that our account (yes, the one that we closed 2 months earlier) was in “overdraft” due to the May HOA maintenance fee having been automatically withdrawn from our account (yes the close account, that was closed almost 2 months earlier)!
The significant thing here is that we did NOT have over draft protection on the account when it was open, but now that it was closed we seemed to have somehow been given it, despite never having asked for it and yes, after having closed the account!
We spend the better part of our day talking with various faceless entities at the bank from the local branch personal to supervisors to head office staff and no-one could figure out what to do.
Apparently, or so the story goes, they owed us $0.02 (two cents) “interest” and could not close the account “while owing us money“. We offered to give them, or their favourite charity this “windfall” but they insisted that “the only way the account could be closed was for them to get us this two cent wind fall!
They could not give us a rational answer as to how we could be granted over draft protection on a closed account when we could not get it when the account was open.
They were threatening us with a bad credit rating due to their incompetence and inability to remedy such a simple problem. We assured them that the HOA would return their money and they finally gave in on the penalty component of the debt that they said we owed.
The HOA did, in fact, immediately return the funds to them and we though that finally the matter had been put to rest but today we discovered that there was a new “Service Charge” of $9.00 because our account (yes the closed account) required that a certain balance be maintained, which obviously wasn’t due to the account being closed!
Am I the only one who sees how dysfunctional all of this is. So again we will have to invest our time on the phone trying to explain what any rational person would consider to be logic to a bank that people entrust their money to with some anticipation of intellect and rational thinking!
We are now caught up in a hamster on a wheel scenario, where if we don’t settle this payment, on an account that we closed four months ago by physically going to the bank and instructing them to close the account and send all remaining funds (which they did with the exception of some $0.02 interest allocation that they did not transact in a timely manner prior to closing the account and forwarding the funds to our Canadian bank account – I guess?!!).
We can’t even just pay them off without excessive fees as, you got it, they can receive payment from a closed account!
So, tomorrow’s activity for us is not limited to once again attempting to explain common sense to this dysfunctional financial institution that promotes itself as America’s top bank!
Really, if this is what can be expected from “America’s top bank” what can be expected from all the other banks down there?
The best thing to come out of all of this is set out in my blogs whereby other unsuspecting Snowbirds and anyone else thinking about opening a bank account with them, hopefully comes across my blog and . . . . . . won’t.
I’ll keep you posted.
I’m Charles
