I have been a customer of Citizen's Bank for about 13 years. Last year, I had to file bankruptcy, so of course, my overdraft line of credit was taken away. I have been struggling ever since. In the last year (and as of today for the last time, I am closing my account and have opened one with INGDirect (great people) and a local Credit Union (who have told me quite a few customers have gone from Citizen's to their institution). I have been charged over $350 in overdraft fees. I am a single mother on a single income (dad is on deadbeat dad list). I have been trying to keep afloat and have called Citizen's Bank and tried to explain to them that one big overdraft charge leads me to more overdrafts (one charge was for $178 in overdraft fees, when the check was for $214 and a McDonald's for $6)!! I have vowed to submit these complaints whenever and wherever I can. I was told that they can charge me whatever they want. I hope that this bank gets their just deserts. They are a bunch of crooks.

I have also had problems with Citizens Bank. On October 2, 2009 I received my Social Security Direct Deposit. Also on that date there was a check from 7 months ago that was cashed by the bank. This check was to an old landlord that I used to have, and way back he told me that he never received this check, so I stopped payment on the check and got a bank check for the money and sent that on to him. Now after 7 months he managed to cash the check. The bank never called me to tell me that a “stale Check” was being cashed, and I didn’t know that “stop payments” were only good for 6 months, so the bank paid out this “old check”. Now because this happened and I didn’t know about it, it overdrew my account and I bounced a bunch of other checks. It was only after calling customer service that I found out that “stop payments” were only good for six months and that the bank shouldn’t have cashed this “stale check”, but I was told that it was up to the bans descretion.
Now the fees that came in due to this amounted to more than $900. I was frantic. I got hit with fees on top of fees. My wife’s direct deposit ended up going into our account before we could stop it, and it paid all of their fees off and left us very little money for food to feed our family of 5.
Also during this time I was running out of Insulin (I am a type 1 diabetic) and I also have Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis. Well I needed Insulin for my pump and the bank refused to free up any of the charges that they had on our account. I ended up have an MS flair twice and ended up in the ER. I also received 2 perscriptions that needed to be filled in order to get over this flair.
I called the bank and a very nice customer service representative named Madona helped me out and freed up $78. so that I could get the prescriptions filled, and then when I went to the bank I was told that I could not take the money out because citizens had put a hold on my account and the one person who could take the hold off was not in that day. I was then escourted out of the bank and was told that Corporate Security was going to be I would not get back any of the fees that I have paid if she had anything to do with it.
I then contacted customer service and lodged a complaint with them. Nest thing I know the claims department is sending me another affidavit in the mail, and this time they want me to try to locate my old landlord so that he can sign it saying that he did infact take money from our account. Can you believe that? I’m sure he’ll sign that?? right?
I was told by Citizens Bank that I can not close my account at this point because it is now back to being negative again, and when I tried to open another account with a different bank I was notified that because of citizens bank I would have to wait for that account to be settled before I can open another account anywhere else. So now my wife is stopping her direct deposit and I have to call Social Security in order for them to stop their direct deposit.
I’m thinking about not having a bank account at all, I’m thinking about getting a safe, and then just getting money orders for all of my bills.

Thank you CITIZEN’S BANK for encourgaing me to not trust banks!