I didn't get de-banked, but I had a similar wacky experience last year with Wells Fargo. I was buying a car from a guy in Salt Lake City. Not a terribly expensive car. I live in Montana but at the time I was physically in Northern California on a trip. I'd driven to SLC and looked at the car, met the seller, and done various things to ensure I knew his identity (e.g. he used his work email and he had a medium profile media job so was listed on his employers' web site with a picture). (for people in other countries: banks in the US make it impossible for regular people to electronically transfer money to someone else, at least not car-sized sums of money) So I initiated a wire transfer to the guy online. Note: his bank account, the wire destination was also a Wells Fargo account. A few minutes later I receive a call from a lady saying she is from Wells Fargo, asks if I initiated a wire. I say yes I did. She asks do I know the recipient. I say yes, and provide some background on how I know him, and how I know he's not a Nigerian Prince. I also mention that his account is at Wells Faro so if they have any concerns, why not pop open his records and check him out. She says that's all great, thanks, good bye.
<hours elapse> guy emails me asking if I sent the wire because it's not in his account. I say sure did, but let me check if the funds have departed my account.
This is when I discover that WF locked all my online account access. And of course they did not send the wire.
This whole mess took nearly the entire day to resolve and required me to go into a WF branch to prove I was myself. And when I did that the helpful WF manager I worked with ended up exasperated at the WF department that had locked my account. She said they ended up suspecting that she was a bad actor, even though she was calling on an internal line!
This all makes me suspect that in addition to bad ML filtering, banks also have plain moron/assholes working in their fraud departments.
(Yes I got the car eventually and my bank accounts back)
I have two great (bad) fraud stories with TD Bank.
I once had my card declined buying groceries, which ultimately took several hours to unlock. The cause? The $1.25 transaction for the fancy air compressor at the gas station to fill my tires. No biggie, had to re-shop when my card was eventually unlocked a few hours later by their slack-ass fraud department.
The second story, I once had my card declined purchasing groceries and found my account was -$750 dollars or so. An old gym I had cancelled my membership was acquired by another firm, and this new firm apparently thought I was still a member and owed several years worth of $54 a month fees. Now, instead of doing (3 * 12 * 54) in a single transaction, or $54 transactions 36 times they just started hitting my account for $100 in serial, then for some reason switching to $50 in serial, and then $25 in serial until I was comically in the hole. The bank manager was able to freeze and deny further charges from the firm, initiate a fraud complaint, and ultimately had my money back in a week. Thankfully I had some cash in my safe for the duration.
What boggles me is they were unable to interpret a company for which I had never made a prior transaction jackpotting my account as a fraud, but Thank God they stopped my $1.25 tire pressure refill.
Similarly, not de-banked, but I did recently have a payment blocked, with no explanation from my bank other than that the recipient seemed suspicious.
It was a payment made in person to a garage that had just serviced my car, to which I've been going for servicing for ~15 years, for an amount similar to the usual cost.
This was rather worrying as if they'd block that I have no idea what other payments might mysteriously fail (the bank's agent did not seem to understand why this might be a concern).
I had something similar happen here in NL, so it's not limited the USA, unfortunately. I paid a very modest invoice amount - to another HN'er, go figure - and as a result got locked out of my online banking and the transfer was held. Took a couple of late night phone calls to get that restored, and then, - surprise -, the next day my accounts were locked again. More phone calls and since then it's been back to normal but this is so amateurish.
This is not the same. The bank did not kick you out as a customer but just locked you out for your "protection". Or more like their "protection" in case it turns out not to be you and you demand the money back.
I said it's not the same thing, but they did kick me out as a customer, for a day. And it's the same in that it was caused by some irrational actor (people or people who manage software). If they wanted to just prevent me from sending money to a Nigerian Prince, they could have a) only blocked the wire, not locked my multiple personal and business accounts and b) told me I had to perform XYZ additional steps to get the wire unblocked. Instead they silently disabled account access then generated a spiral of BS, exasperation and time wasting, for a day.
<hours elapse> guy emails me asking if I sent the wire because it's not in his account. I say sure did, but let me check if the funds have departed my account. This is when I discover that WF locked all my online account access. And of course they did not send the wire.
This whole mess took nearly the entire day to resolve and required me to go into a WF branch to prove I was myself. And when I did that the helpful WF manager I worked with ended up exasperated at the WF department that had locked my account. She said they ended up suspecting that she was a bad actor, even though she was calling on an internal line!
This all makes me suspect that in addition to bad ML filtering, banks also have plain moron/assholes working in their fraud departments.
(Yes I got the car eventually and my bank accounts back)