My 18 year old daughter opened up her first checking account at Amcore Bank in Elgin Illinois. She kept a balance of over $1000.00 in there at most times until her employer of 3 years, laid her off. She overdrafted her account one day and she called the bank to see how much she needed to deposit to bring the account up to a positive balance. She was told that she needed $30.00. I went to the bank with her and we deposited $30.00 at 11:45PM that night in thier ATM. The deposit reciept now showed a positive balance. We determined that she didn't have any outstanding debits or checks to go against her account, so we thought we were safe. We thought everything was OK until 2 days later when she recieved another overdraft notice in the mail for the day after we made the deposit, for $62.00. We again went to the ATM just before midnight and made another deposit to cover this overdraft. Again, we recieved a reciept that showed a positive balance. When the bank opened the next day, we called to make sure her account was accurate. They again, showed a negative balance and debited her account for another $60.oo in fees. Thier lame explanation was that when you make a deposit in thier ATM, they do not credit your account for 48 hours, even though it shows a positive balance on your reciept from the ATM. They said there was a sign stating that on the ATM machine. We went to check this out and there is no such sign. There is a very small sign that says "Deposits made in this ATM may not be available for immediate withdrawel." This is a standard in the industry meaning that you cannot withdraw cash on uncleared funds. We fully understand that. When we talked to the Bank Manager, she wouldn't even go outside to look at the ATM machine so we could show her that there was no sign. She insisted that there was and that was that! When we went to close the account, she said there would be a $35.00 charge for closing the account. This was in the contract that my daughter signed when she opened the account! I am 56 years old. I have never seen a bank contract for a checking account. The manager stated that my daughter should have read all of the fine print in the bank brochures before opening the account. She said it's not thier responsability to point that out to thier customers. We went to write her a check for the $35.00. She said there would be additional overdraft fees added to her account if we paid by check because it would take another 48 hours for the check to clear! Talk about being caught in a trap!
There are plenty of good banks to do business with. AMCORE BANK IS DEFINITELY A CROOKED BANK! STAY AWAY FROM THEM!