LEXINGTON, N.C. — ‘The check is in the mail.’ It's a well-known saying, but these days, chances are, it's an electronic check being sent through the system. As a service, banks cut thousands of electronic checks to help customers pay their bills every day. It works until it doesn't.
“She told me it was going to be my responsibility to repay it, even if they don't get the money back. I said, ‘oh no’, I'm not paying it, ‘cause it's not my fault,” said Clementine Jones.
Repay? She’s out $1,778 and any patience she had left.
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For four months, she went back and forth between three banks. It started with PNC bank.
Clementine had PNC issue an electronic check to Wells Fargo for $1,960 on October 20, 2021. The same day, she had PNC issue an electronic check to Citi Cards for $1,778.
PNC emailed Clementine the confirmation that both payments were made. This was something Clementine had done many times before, but this time, something went wrong.
“For some reason, on November 2, 2022, Wells Fargo cashed both checks,” said Jones.
Sure enough, the electronic check is made out to Citi Cards, but Wells Fargo endorsed the check and cashed it. Wells Fargo had the money for both payments and Citi Cards had none.
“PNC was telling me Wells Fargo had to help me and Wells Fargo had to help me and initiate it. They didn't want to fix it, everyone was trying to say, you need to take care of it and no one wanted to take responsibility. They wanted me to do it. What am I supposed to do,” said Jones.
She tried to fix it. She made calls to both banks involved.
“I talked to 15-20 different people, but with no results,” said Jones.
She even physically went to both branches.
“They said well, we really don't know what to do, and I couldn't understand that, you know, a big bank, they didn't know what to do, how to get the money back,” said Jones.
2 Wants To Know got involved. We emailed and got responses from Wells Fargo that they were trying to work things out, but PNC wasn't responding.
After a week of emailing, 2 Wants To Know followed our own advice and direct messaged PNC on Twitter, before making it a public ask.
“That really helped because my money was in my account the same day you went on Twitter, the money was in my account,” said Jones.
That's a $1,778 win right there! Consumer Issues take time and patience.
If you're not getting a response by email or phone, go to social media, but do a direct message first. Companies appreciate you giving them a chance to fix it instead of calling them out publicly.