Although some people have stronger feelings about First Union than I do (and with all apologies to a friend whose husband works for First Union), I don't think of First Union Bank as evil per se (see Cross-Country Bank), but I do think that they're a little confused. In December of 1998 and January of 1999, a branch of Cross-Country Bank hacked into my checking account (while claiming to be working for Citibank) in order to process "payments" they claimed I owed them. The first payment was slightly more than I actually had in the account, so when I called First Union about the overdraft I told them not to accept anymore withdrawals from this account on the basis that the withdrawal had never been authorized by me and therefore was fraudulent. Sound simple? Apparently not. The response was, "Well, we really can't do that. If they have your checking account number than there's no way for us to tell whether it's a legitimate transaction or not." Huh? I reminded them that this was not by any means a legitimate transaction, and nothing more from this company should be allowed to get through. "Well," they continued, "if they have a legitimate check number, there really isn't anything we can do to stop them." "The check number came up as 9999," I told them. "I don't have any checks by that number." "That's an electronic check," they explained. "It's standard procedure." And, as it turned out, it was a check number that Cross-Country Bank could use indefinitely, at their own discretion. "Fine, then," I said. "I want to forbid ANY electronic withdrawals from my account by ANYONE." "We can't really do that..." No matter who I talked to, the reaction was the same. "We can't really do that..." I tried insisting that it was their own bank and they could do whatever they wanted, but that point seemed to go over their heads. When I told them just to close the checking account, they said that was impossible until I paid off the outstanding balance. So theoretically--and they agreed with this possibility--Cross-Country could have made as many withdrawals as they wanted to, for as long as they wanted to. Despite this agreement, however, they still insisted there was nothing they could do about it. Two weeks later, Cross-Country made another withdrawal from my account. In First Union's defense, they did have a pretty good Fraud Prevention Department. I spoke with an agent there named Marcia Greene, who went ahead and closed my account despite the now-much larger outstanding balance and wiped out the overdraft fees on the checks I had bounced because of the unwanted withdrawals. She also arranged to send me an affidavit I could sign testifying to the fact that the withdrawals from CCB had not been authorized by me and thus were fraudulent. But mailing back the affidavit was the last I ever heard anything about it, and a few weeks ago I received yet another letter from First Union wanting to know why I hadn't paid off the outstanding balance (which still included the money withdrawn by Cross-Country.) I solved the CCB problem by going to a small bank in Roanoke called First National Exchange Bank, which allowed me to set up an account where no electronic withdrawals would be allowed unless I personally signed a waiver for each and every individual withdrawal beforehand. As for First Union...well, my advice to you is this: big banks may offer a lot of convenience, but when they screw up, the headaches and frustrations are even more colossal.
UPDATE FOR FEBRUARY 2002: For some months I'd been tussling back and forth with a legal representative of First Union, a New York City law office called Mitchell N. Kay. Finally, tired of all the wrangling, explaining, and headaches, when they put forward another offer to settle for $150 of the original $232 balance, I agreed--but asked to make two or three payments instead of one lump sum. They agreed. And subsequently sent me a bill asking for payments...on the entire $232 sum.
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