Florida Citizens Bank

Would Not Even Recomend To An Enemy!!!
- kw - Friday, February 10, 2012 - 10:53 AM

This is a quote copy and pasted from their online banking page:

"ALERT**Temporary Preauthorized Transactions
Some Debit Card transactions are "preauthorized" by various merchants you are using. These preauthorizations may appear as many as three(3) times on your daily activity reports."

This has caused my debit card purchases to decline several times when in fact I have sufficient funds to cover the transaction.

For example you have $900 in your account.  You spend $300 at the grocery store.  You then stop to get $45 worth of gas but your card is declined because they held $900 from your grocery store transaction ($300 held 3 times). Now I hope you have enough gas to get home or an account at another bank to get some gas with.

This has happened to me several times with them.  When I call them to ask why my card is declined they tell me my account is negative from preauthorization holds from the same transaction.  What is even worse they can not even tell you what merchant any pending transactions are from until they actually post to the account post several days later.  The online banking website does not even show where the transactions are from. All it shows is "Debit Memo: *PENDING" and the amount, no merchant name so you can not even dispute anything before it actually posts to your account. 

They then tell me this is how every bank works. I am a bank employee for another bank and our systems used to do this back when debit cards FIRST came out, but like most banks we upgraded our systems to keep this from happening.  They kept their decades old program.  When I inform them of this they tell me I do not know what I am talking about (kind of insulting if you ask me since I have been in retail banking operations for almost 20 years) and that all banks are like this.

I would bank with the bank I work for but then my employer would be able to see my account activity.  Not really a big deal but my coworkers and the company do not need to see my account.  That just makes me uncomfortable or I would bank there.  I wish I knew Florida Citizens Bank was like this when I first signed up or I would not have, now I have to wait for my direct deposit to change over to another bank.

Also, I was in Lowes buying a new refrigerator.  It was a great deal but the sale ended that day (it was a Sunday).  I went to use my debit card to buy the refrigerator but the transaction was declined.  Not because of multiple preauthorization holds, but because there is a $1000 daily limit on your card.  How is somebody supposed to make a major purchase with that?  I wish they had of told me about that before hand.  How embarrassing all these declined transactions are getting.  The next day when I was able to get Florida Citizens Bank on the phone to tell me about the limit, the sale at Lowes was over and the refrigerator was back at full price several hundred dollars more.

I called the number on the back of my card 352-332-4727 but I get a message saying the switchboard is closed because it is not regular weekday business hours.  How am I supposed to even report my card stolen before somebody spends $1000 per day all weekend?