My wife and I left South Carolina for New England in December, closing down our SunTrust Bank account shortly before we left. Well, we thought we had closed the account down-- at least the banking administrator made us believe we had and that's what I told her I wanted to do. A few weeks after relocating back to New England, we received a letter from SunTrust stating there was one cent left in our account and we owed them a $13.99 monthly maintenance fee. It seemed like a joke but it wasn't. You wonder how much intensive labor goes into maintaining one penny. And why couldn't someone at the bank have the common sense to just take the initiative and close the account down in the first place? Anyway, I called the bank up and was told I needed to send a letter to one of their offices in Atlanta and include about six specific pieces of information before they could rid the account of the accursed penny and make sure we wouldn't be receiving any more bills from the bank. I did exactly as SunTrust told me to do, mailed the information to Atlanta, but we've still received two more notices requesting $13.99. When the latest one said there would be a $30 closing fee, I placed another call to the bank and repeated what had happened again. The "customer service" representative claimed they hadn't received my letter. I'm sure they had, but knowing this bank had already made a mess of closing my account, I surmised losing my letter would be even easier for them to do. Once again I was told to call the bank back in 24 hours because they were depositing $27.98 into my account to balance the negative amount I now "owed" them and it takes 24 hours for this transaction to occur. I'll do as directed tomorrow but if we move down south again I know I'll never use this bank again for anything. If they can't handle the smallest maneuver correctly, pretty unlikely they'll be successful in dealing with a major issue.

I had read all the posting on Bank of America. Well I just want to tell you that Suntrust is not much better. Just recently I started seeing "extended" overdraft fees. This is now policy that should you have overdraft anything in your account for more that 7 days, you will get an additional $36 added as a fee. Even if its an item as small as $3.00 Which is what happened to me.

Should there be a cap/percentage according to the dollar amount that bounced. I mean $3!!! That is insane! My $3 dollar item ended up costing me $75! What can we do?? Anything? and has any one taken the time to research who has the cheapest fees and now apparently "exteded" fees? I would like to hear if so!

On August 27th 2009, my husbands Check was Automatically deposited into our Checking account. This Bank took 400$ in Banking Fee's out of my husbands Check. We had decided to stop with Suntrust that day. On August 31st 2009, we used our Debit cards for the last time, as they where turned off.

On September 2nd 2009, my Husband went into the branch of Flagler County in Florida, and spoke with a man name Harvey Smith. He was in charge of our Banking. He proceeded to tell us, that he refuses to return any fee's assets due to the fact that their branch needs their bonus checks. Mu husband asked him if he can freeze the account so that charges can not go through, as we already where in the Negative 47$. He refused, again, he told my husband that he hopes the fee's get to 1, 000$ so he can prosecute us.

October 28th 2009, we checked our Checking yet again, as we have been since August, we have watched the "fee"s go higher and higher and higher, today October 28th 2009, our account is -1, 242.21. Neither one of us have touched our debit cards since August 31st 2009. We have even confirmed this with their 1-800 number and asked when the last time was that we used our cards, the gentleman on the phone states August 31st 2009.

There are as follows:
10 banking fee's of 36.00$
4 banking fee's of 72.00$
1 banking fee of 144.00$
3 banking fee's of 108.00$

All of those fee's read NSF- When we click on those they claim it was debited.

Yet our cards have been shut off and untouched since August 31st 2009

The fee's start September 3rd 2009 to October 22nd 2009 (so far)

Harvey Smith of the Branch Flagler County in Palm Coast Florida has been assessing fee's and charging them as a debit, due to the grudge he has against my husband.

Now we are fighting with this bank and not one person will help us.

Please explain?

I had to vent this somewhere. How can SunTrust be so bad at what they do?

I had been with SunTrust for more than 7 years, a faithful customer and somewhat biased towards the home team. That all dropped the day I realized I put a "3" instead o f a "4" for the month category under billpay.

SunTrust sent out a check for $980 to my landlord, who cashed it. Since I have a savings account, I don't put a lot of money in my checking, and it was overdrafted. Now, some banks don't cash the check, and you must pay a $35 returned check fee. Not SunTrust. They sent the money out and charged me $35. Ok...

But it doesn't stop there. Though I acceded to their demands and have been getting paperless statements, they figured the best way to contact me about this overdraft was to MAIL me a letter. Four days later, I get a later from SunTrust saying my account is overdrafted. I look online, and see that a check went to my landlord that wasn't supposed to. I go into SunTrust the next day and expain it, and the bank manager says that the excess charges that have racked up since that day ($250) are not their fault, because I put in the date wrong, and so I can't get a refund. I explain to them that is was a simple input error, but the woman was adamant, saying I should be "grateful" that SunTrust took the "courtesy" to pay my incoming charges. I said, LADY! It's not a courtesy when you charge me $35 per transaction, and can't even email me when you're spamming me with junk everyday!

In the end, I switched to BANK OF AMERICA. I don't know, maybe they will suck as well, but I know one thing. There overdraft protection is free, and they provide me alerts when my account goes below a certain amount. To me, those two things are the LEAST SunTrust could do.

This letter is being written to document the negative impact the financial institutions are having on our current economy. My name is Jeff Schwarz, and I am one of the largest, private commercial landlords in North Carolina. I have been both an incubator of small businesses and partner to large businesses in the market for over 45 years, and, until recently, have had an outstanding relationship with over 70 community banks. It has recently come to my attention that a local financial institution, SunTrust Bank, refused to renew a small commercial loan that they had owned for 5 years. Immediately, I had one of my employees request renewal terms, and received a response from the bank in less than one week: 12 month renewal, 12% interest rate, 1% origination fee to the bank, and all updated third party reports. These terms are a disgrace to any investor, large or small, and the American public should not have to be forced to deal with issues such as these during this economic crisis. Banks can only make money by lending money, and for an institution such as SunTrust Bank to deny credit, or offer terms that may as well be saying no, is absurd.

As an upstanding member of a small North Carolina community, I am not going to sit back and allow these financial institutions to crush the American Dream. I would like your help, as our elected official, to make an example out of this event and help us, the consumers, fight through this economic turmoil. Consumers are giving these banks billions of dollars in TARP funds, and are not getting anything in return. I am outraged, and hope that you are as well.