Tom of Tulare, CA, writes:
In the mid 90s, after suffering several heart attacks and undergoing heart surgery, I opened a checking account at Union Bank of California in Visalia. Because of deteriorating health I had one of my daughters on the account with me to facilitate matters if I was unable to take care of them myself.

A few months ago I was getting tired of an AARP insurance policy being deducted from the account long after I had cancelled it with the company and AOL still hitting me for fees, even though I had been trying to cancel that account for several months. I asked the branch manager what I should do, and she suggested cancelling the old account (different branch) and opening a new one (at her branch). So I did.

I didn't have my daughter placed on this new account. I made sure there were no outstanding checks or charges against the account at the time I closed it. Unknown to me, the bank continued to allow charges against the account, mainly from AOL, after I had supposedly closed it. To make a long story a tad shorter, I wound up with a couple of hundred dollars worth of charges against this old account as the bank kept paying them against insufficient funds and then adding a $25 charge for every one of them.

I made the mistake of trying to reason with them, telling them that the only reason I had closed the account was to escape those very charges that they were now threatening me over and it had been their idea to do so. In the meantime my daughter had opened an account of her own at the same bank. A couple of days ago, they shut down my new account, took every cent in it, and since I was short on what they said I owed they also closed out MY DAUGHTER's totally separate account, stripping $168 out of it to pay MY "debt".

No negoitations, no warning, no real explanation even of what was happening. We're out a couple of hundred bucks minimum because the bank allows AOL to charge against a closed account until THEY (AOL) tell them not to. I was unable to get AOL to cancel my account in a timely manner and I was unable to get the bank to stop charging my account for AOL fees. This, as my youngest daughter puts it, sucks.

My daughter actually suffered the most financially since that $168 was all she had to live on after being downsized from her old job and before her new work place opened for business. I have to pay her back of course and when you work for Sears and your take home pay is a lousy $160 a week, yeah, that's a hardship. I now owe my child $168, more than a week's takehome pay for me and I'm going without food again to pay it off.

This is a disgrace. Tom should complain to the <"a href=http://www.occ.treas.gov/">Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the state banking commissioner. He could also sue Union Bank in Small Claims Court.

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