Fifth Third Bank / 53.com
Reviews and Complaints

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epkw-OLxKYw&feature=channel_video_title
This video explains everything. You may need to pause a few parts to read the story. Basically, I animated a phone call I recorded when calling back Fifth Third Bank after getting harassing phone calls for almost a month. I called them three times and told them to remove me from their call list and they said they couldn't and wouldn't. The story is basically ridiculous. I urge you to watch the video if you have time. Their customer service is horrible. I have filed complaints here, with the BBB of Cincinnati, Consumer Affairs, The Federal Reserve, and the FTC Do Not Call Registry (many many times, every phone call they make). Ever since I told them to stop calling me and I would be closing my account due to their harassment, their call volume has increased. They call many times daily and it's sickening me.

The only bank I've been to that charges to cash personal checks. I've been to one bank that charges to cash business checks. I think it's all a big ripoff . If I pay my utility bill or phone bill with a check, does the utility company or phone company have to pay that fee? Somehow, I doubt it. This should be illegal. It defeats the purpose of paying by check. I suppose I could charge my customers a fee for paying by check. And alienate them.

As a result of recent damage to my vehicle, I received a check from my insurance company for property value loss. Unfortunately, it was addressed to both me and Fifth Third Bank (title holder). Since the nearest branch of Fifth Third Bank is 100 miles away from me, I contacted customer service for the best way to handle this. I was instructed to endorse the check (which, obviously, I was wary of) and mail it to their claims department. I was told by this person, who stated she was reading from the policy manual for instructions for this situation, that this was the only way they would endorse the check but that, not to worry, they would put their endorsement and return the check to me, Fex Ex if i preferred since it would then be completely endorsed. Today I received a phone call from Fifth Third Bank letting me know my check had been applied to my loan. Obviously, it is not awful to have a chunk of the balance of my loan taken off. However, I had been told I would get my check back. My loan payment is not behind. There was no reason for them to absorb it. I live paycheck to paycheck, and I had made plans to pay off a bill and give my son a nice birthday for a change. Now I am going to have plan an expensive, last minute birthday for my son because somebody lied to me in this company. Not only that, but the fact that I was lied to by a supposed "professional" infuriates me, especially when there is no recourse. I was suckered into endorsing that check because I chose to have a little faith in this company's honesty with their customers rather than getting in my car and driving 100 miles to the nearest branch.

Once Fifth Third Bank gets your mortgage, you WILL pay and pay on time every month. File the papers for a hardship reduction, loan mitigation, or loan modification and you will be turned down.

I've been trying to work with them since December, 2010 and have filed tons of paperwork only to be told that no change could be made to my home loan for totally lame reasons. I have a lien on the house. This should be a reason to help me not to turn me down. I've had cancer. I have $15, 000 in medical bills.

I was conducting business as a supervisor of a non profit organization who does home delivered meals for the elderly and, unfortunately, has a business bank account with Fifth Third Bank. I brought in our end of the week deposit, of around $1000.00, and also had a petty cash check from our business account that I needed to cash - the grand sum of $187.00. These bozos wanted to charge me $8.00 to cash the company petty cash check drawn on their bank, because I didn't have a PERSONAL account with them. This makes no sense whatsoever. I was not there doing business for myself, this was not for my benefit, this was part of a business transaction on their bank's business account. The manager was so busy eating a Dairy Queen frozen dessert - at 2:00 in the afternoon (6/10/11) that she wouldn't even get up to talk with me. I was so outraged and incredulous at the insideous, assinine and ridiculously total lack of intelligence at this "policy" that I was almost speechless. The teller said "I'm really sorry" - they are sorry all right - a sorry excuse of a cluster of unbelievably ###ic "bankers". By the way, I've done the very same thing on several occassions before, but now, all at once, they want to charge me. This is so wrong on so many levels I don't know where to start. My boss, the County Director of this non profit, had to go cash the check for me. This cost me untold time, her time and frustration that is almost undescribable. I am so frustrated at the "dumbing down of America" where business/people have lost all perspective and concept of reality and logic. Fifth Third has to be the absolutely WORST bank I have EVER had the displeasure of dealing with. This will cost them so much in negative publicity - I will tell anyone who will listen this absurd response and policy of theirs. Fifth Third Bank sucks beyond the telling!

I saw the commercials starring Montel Williams for Money Mutual . Being a little short on cash, and my car broken down, I went to thier web site, and filled out an application. The application includes giving your bank account info and against my better judgement. However, I used an account I hardly ever use carring a very low balance. I began recieving as many as 50 approval e-mails a day. I opened one offer and saw that the interest rate was almost 900% APR and declined the offer, and began deleteing the e-mails. One company, SSM put $200.00 in the account at Third Federal Bank of Newtown PA with out my knowledge or approval. SSM then began to take $60.00 every other Friday until the account went negative. (4th attempt) Third Federal did not contact me about unusual activity but continued to pay the items tacking on 30 NSF until the account was 200 overdrawn. I was then contacted by the collection Dept of Third Federal, I explained I had no idea what was going on, and Promised to come into the bank the following week. Meeting with a Bank Rep, I was advised of who was withdrawling funds, and given the Contact info. I spoke to a woman at SSM who said that thier policy was that if you did not decline, then they assumed you accepted the loan. She dais that if I never used the money, then perhaps a lender could reverse all the transactions. I called back several times and each time that rep was unavailble and was the only one who could help me.
In the mean time, even though I had filed fraud documents in a Third Federal branch, I recieved a letter signed by Ronald Keck VP of Collection treateniing to do several negative thing that included; Filing a report with the credit bureas, the IRS (unearned income) and contacting the Police. I did finnally pay off the bank total loss to me was $195...

Bank here at your own risk.

Fifth Third lost a $5, 000 check. It went into my account and the next day when I checked online it was gone. I went back to the branch where I had deposited the check (Oak Park Illinois) and they had absolutely no record of the check ever being deposited. Not electronically, not in their log, not anywhere. The only record, per the bank manager, was the receipt in my hand, and of course the money withdrawn from Chase. The handling of this matter from a customer service perspective was rude and unprofessional.

Bank here (Fifth Third) only if you do not care how you are treated or how incompetently the staff performs!

I deposited a check through 5/3's ATM on a non-holiday Friday night, as my work schedule makes it virtually impossible to visit a branch during it's open hours. I waited the standard three days for the check to clear and be added to my available balance before I wrote a check for monthly rent. Two days after I'd already turned in the rent check, I noticed on my 5/3 online banking site that my account was overdrawn for the amount of my paycheck, plus overdraft fees, and that my rent check had been refused which accrued a returned check fee from both the bank and my landlord.

The bank had cleared my paycheck and then took it back without warning me, quickly racking up over $200 in fees that I was expected to pay. I took a day off work to get this sorted out and was told that my paycheck couldn't be honored due to it being allegedly filled out incorrectly. When I presented proof that it had in fact been honored for at least a day I received an apology for the mix up but they still insisted that they could not honor the paycheck and only refunded half the overdraft fees while telling me I should contact my employers in order to get a properly filled out paycheck. In the three days it took me to receive a new paycheck the bank continued to charge me over draft fees despite the fact that they'd cleared the "improper" check in the first place!

OK.. So get to the LAST page in my Car payment book... It says to call this number at 5th 3rd to get the final payment amount... I did.. Payment was slightly lower than my monthly car payment. :) ... I send in that payment and assumed BINGO... Car is paid off. ... Fast forward 1 1/2 months and I get a letter in the mail saying I owe almost $1100 for the final payment and its due in two weeks or I will get charged extra late fees!... What a bunch of BULL ###! ... Why is the final payment OVER TWICE what the normal monthly payment is? ... Why did THEIR AUTOMATED SYSTEM give me the amount it did, then want more later... Its a bunch of ###... I called them to try to sort it out.. Big surprise.. They say say that I owe this $1100 and they have no record or proof that the other amount was given to me. And there is NOT5th HING they can do and that the amount owed. ... 5th 3rd SUCKS! ... If you have a car payment with them and your near your final payment... Call the automated number they give you.. AND RECORD THE CALL! Otherwise they will pull the same BS with you as they did me. ... I WILL NEVER EVER EVER DO ANY BUSINESS WITH THEM EVER AGAIN! ... I will steer EVERYONE I KNOW AWAY FROM THEM ! ... And I LOVE the fact that this P. Brian Moore whos name is on this crap letter can not be gotten a hold of... No email address anywhere... No one will connect you to him... EVERYONE STAY AS FAR AWAY FROM 5TH 3RD BANK NO MATER WHY!... DO NOT get a Credit Card from them, don't do a car loan with them, do not get a house loan with them, Don't even get a checking or savings account with them. ... If this is how they treat someone who has ALWAYS paid they payment on time... Think how they treat others! ... 5th 3rd YOU SUCK ###!

I just got back from the edison plaza fifth third bank branch in Grand Rapids Mi. We needed to have a warrenty deed noterized. The teller was polite and asked one of the managers, as he was right there in front of us if he could help us. His response to her was he was able to noterize documents however he did not have his "stuff" at that office. This arrogant ### never once looked at us, asked us what we needed, nor offered any assistance whatsoever. His body language and demeanor gave us the clear impression he was way too important to address any customer directly. We were asked to wait for someone who could help. After waiting for well over an hour watching the arrogant ### chat with the tellers and another office employee, strut back on forth through the bank, someone finally appeared to help us. She asked what we needed noterized and I said a warrenty deed, her immediate and rude response was "the bank has a policy that we can no longer noterize warrenty deeds" . My point is that if the ### in the suit had taken a second to ask us what we needed, and told us they could not do it we would not have had to wait. This was not a busy bank branch, no more than 3 people came in all the time we sat there waiting, its just the poor customer service that fifth third has had ever since they took over old kent.

I have endured the questionable recording practices of 5/3 for some time. I cannot and do not fault them when I am charged a know fee for poor record keeping but I did want to share a couple of stories in which 5/3 stole my money and left me with little recours. First- The Winter of 2009 blasted my area with ice and put my town in a state of emergency. The all branchesof the bank were closed for 2 1/2 days but corporate (in Cincinnati) kept on pluggin away. I was unable to deposit money in my account due to the bank closure and overdrafted three items. When they opened back up and I addressed the issue I was told the would only refund 1/2 of one $37 fee but only if I agreed to open a 5/3 Early Access Account (which currently breaks Kentucky State Max Interest Rate laws). After I opened the account I was not allowed access to it for 60 days? In short I was not allowed to make a deposit by no fault of mine and they were unwilling to waive all of the fees. This is the latest way the legal thieves will cause overdrafts. If you have a pending transaction that WILL NOT POST on that day it still goes against your balance even though there is no attempt to post to the account. Here is my example...started Wed morning with $110 beginning balance and had three debit card transactions posted totalling $89 which left me $11 ending balance. My daily activity still shows this and never has shown a negative balance. On Thur I was charged $111 in overdraft fees and I was told that there was $62 pending transaction (which posted Thursday) that made my available balance less than required to cover the 3 debit transactions when ordered from greatest to least. FYI...only one if least to greatest. They confirmed they could not have posted the $62 on Wed if they wanted to and made no attempt to post it to my account. They did not receive trhe transaction from the vendor until Thursday.The overdraft notice reads that my account balance is($50.59) but my daily balance has never reflected a negative amount during this situation. I was told that the ($50.59) was an 'Overnight Balance' even though it reads that was my beginning balance on Thuirs. To top all of this off I had utilized their website to transfer $270 from one account into the other on Wed night prior to any postings taking place. The online transfer showed that it was posted to my account at that time and my 'AVAILABLE BALANCE' was adjusted according. I was told that even though it showed it was posted and it was added to my AVAILABLE BALANCE it was not because I performed the activity after 9:00 pm EST. To repeat even though my account showed there was an adequate available balance I was told that 'no that was not correct. you would have seen that but it is actually not posted' I am in search of attorney and will post when (not if) I find one.

my diabled daughter has her money in a trust acccount with fifth third bank. and the trust officer has been fraudently investing for the banks gain, and money just disappears, and she is not even supposed to be investing any monies, she a trustee to protect her momey, well over 593, 000 is just hidden and for 5 years shes been unetical, the bank is investing in their own bank and my daughter is losing alot of monies. well i finally hired a litagator lawyer to transfer the monies to a bank by my house. i live in parkland, fl and naples is 3 hours away. well no she finally sent me a card with my new financial advisor who i dont want, its a conflict of interst to have the bank your money is in a trust to be investing. after she has been violating alot of fcc and unethical codes for 5 years.
can you please help us
olga houle
my disabled daughter is elisbeth echevarria
cell [protected]
home [protected]
jeannine stetson is the trust officer [protected]
i have all the evidence since day one.

I received a letter in the mail that my open line of credit has beed suspended. I have had this account for over five years and have never missed a payment. The letter read, "During a routine review of your Line of Credit account we noted a significant change in your financial circumstances. As a result, we are suspending further draws from your Line of Credit." That sounds really bad. I got my "free" credit report and found it looked better than ever. (No negatives, good debit to income ratio, etc.) I called the number on the letter and tried to get someone that could tell me ...WHY? They claim they do not have access to that information. I asked to be put in contact with someone who could. The lady kept repeating herself that there was no one I could talk to. How in the world can they change my financial plans without any explanation? I reassured them my credit is fine, my house has not depreciated, not late on any payments. They made a mistake. I can't even prove it to them because they would tell me why. How ever, in 10 business days a should get some papers in the mail to reapply for it. WHAT?!? So they can run my credit report AGAIN! Or maybe convience me to refinance. I am looking into a financial institution that wants to help me and work with me. This bank obviously has gotten too big for thier own good.

Never bank with Fifth Third. They have lousy customer service and terrible banking system. Two weeks ago, I made a deposit through the drive through teller. I got my receipt and I was so glad I saved it because I found out few days later my paycheck deposit went into another person's account! The receipt had my checking account number but their system made a HUGE mistake. How can you trust a bank that makes a mistake like that? So they reversed all the overdraft fees $33 x2 because it was their fault.
This time I made a mistake of making an online payment a day earlier than I should have. I do admit. This was my mistake. I decided to call the bank asking them if they would reverse my overdraft fees since they made a mistake with my account two weeks earlier. Their response? Only willing to reverse half of the overdraft fee $16.50.
Overall, I am not satisfied with their service. There are so many other banks out there. Why should I bank with Fifth Third?

How can 5/3 charge for pending charges that have not posted to my account? My ending balance was in the positive, but because some pending charges came in and two are charges that are going to be credited to my account due to the other businesses mistake. They over charged me three times because the clerk was new and didn't know what she was doing. Those are still pending but will be credited tonight but 5/3 is going to charge me overdraft charges. Can they legally do this. The other penalties are my fault due to a check my husband forgot to inform me about, but I really feel they should waive the two transactions that are going to be credited to my account. Right? Does anyone have any input on this matter? I am really angry with that bank they are fine until you encounter a problem ... then they act like they could careless about you even if it was an error that was beyond my control. Any information would help.

Our home mortgage was originally with First Charter. We also had a 2nd mtg. equity line with them. Service and communication was excellent. Then, 5/3 Bank bought First Charter. Around the 3rd month after they because our mortgage company...a member of their collections department left a message on the answering machine at my husband's office, where the secretary was the person who took messages off the machine and anyone standing in the area could hear it! Message -- we hadn't paid our mortgage that month and now we would incur a late charge. Funny thing about that, we had always had the mortgage payment automatically deducted from our account...and it HAD BEEN deducted that month. When I called the person who left the message he informed me that we WERE late even after I explained that the payment was drafted from our account by them. He claimed he was collections and had no way of knowing that a payment had been made. Wow, just wow.
Next up -- our homeowner's insurance and taxes are escrowed and paid by the mortgage company. I got the annual notice that both had been paid, filed it. Three months later I get a letter from 5/3 telling me that I didn't have homeowner's insurance and 5/3 was going to charge me for insurance and my mortgage payment was going up. When I called the guy who sent the letter he insisted they had no record of us having insurance and I needed to provide proof. I told him they had proof and he'd better go find the files. It wasn't my job to give him proof of something they not only had, but had paid for three months earlier!
Next up -- we decided this year to refinance since rates were so low. Our closing was held up a month because 5/3 had recorded our 2nd mortgage with the county twice! Once right after they purchased First Charter and again 6 months later...yep, great bank. When the bank we were doing the refi with let me know this she told me 5/3 said they could not deal with her only the homeowner could request a fix. So, I called the 800 number (and don't even give me space to complain about their automated system). I got a young man (emphasis on young) who said, oh yes, I see it's recorded twice. When I asked him to have it fixed and let my refi bank know, he said "I'm an inbound call center, I can't make calls out". Great customer service. Just Great! and...he promised he'd take care of my problem.
Two weeks go by, I get another call from my refi person, no, the 2nd mortgage double recording has not been fixed. At this point I want to beat someone over the head with my phone. So, I called the local branch and spoke to a nice guy, Wes, who actually got back to me in no time and explained...get this, all my refi person needed to do was fax them a copy of the Title Company's report of the double recording and they'd fix it. Hmmm, the refi person CAN do this? The homeowner isn't the "only" person who can request the fix? Great customer service, yep yep.
It isn't over folks. The closing went thru on the 11th, the funds were wired on the 15th. The day my mtg payment used to be due. Yes, you know where this is going. 5/3 (ok, I gotta say this, the stupidest name for a bank ever, because if they think that they are 1 and 2/3 better than any other bank they got another think coming) ok, back to my sentence, they deducted the mortgage payment EVEN THO the mortgage was paid off.
I called Wes, since he was the man who managed to get something done before, only to learn that "tough @$#! consumer, your money will be mailed in 3 to 5 business days. And WE should have notified the company that does the payment thingy to stop. And I should have pulled this info from where? my @ss? First Charter never told me and 5/3 certainly never did. And guess what, banks can wire transfer money around the world but 5/3 can't put my money back that way. A credit card company can. Wachovia Bank fixed an error for us immediately, put the money right back in my checking.
Sad footnote, the lady helping with my refi...she has a 5/3 mtg and she was so sympathetic because she's had problems with them too! I see a refi in her future.

I have a small t-shirt business borrowed $20, 000 for down payment with a loan of $126, 000 never late on payments it is automatic out of business account have one payment left on down payment and 10 yrs left on building payment they sent me a letter saying I have defaulted then said they wanted to give me an extension for 1 yr VP came to my business laid a paper down on my desk and said sign right here. I said I am not gonna sign nothing till I have read the paper work. First page big print said by signing this you agree you have defaulted and you have no legal rights in court and anytime Fifth Third deems necessary they can take all my assets and get a judgement against me without any notification. I am not allowed to sell anything for the next year. I knew something was up when they started asking me questions about my other assets WTF is this RUSSIA OR WHAT

On Thursday 1/27/11 I sent out a check for my car loan (through a different bank.) I did not check my bank balance on Friday thinking the check wouldn't get down there before Saturday at the earliest, when my paycheck, which is directly deposited, would show up. So on Saturday I went to Walmart to buy some groceries but only got a partial payment. I go to check my account and they had let that check go through. Now I live in Northern Michigan and the address for the bill is in Columbus, OH, some 600 plus miles away. On Friday, 1/28/11 the check somehow managed to get there and be cashed. When I send a birthday card to my family downstate it takes two days to get there first class. How in the hell did it get down there in one day when every other time before that my payment goes through on the following Monday?! I know they did this on purpose to screw me out of money. I had to do an advance and the partial payment is still on my account, even though Walmart voided the transaction and rang up everything over again. This has happened to me before and I lost out on 800 dollars. I even deposited my check and they never bothered to mention I was overdrawn. It took a closer branch to tell me the issue and I had to get a loan from my family to pay for it. This is the last straw. I have a UM credit union account but it's too far away and there are no local branches outside of Ann Arbor, so I will go to Bay Winds credit union instead. This bank should be punished for it's terrible practices and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for the crimes against their customers!

Fifth Third Bank is dispicable in their banking practices. About four years ago I moved from the Kalamazoo Michigan area to a small town in NE Georgia. There are no branches for Fifth Third Bank anywhere near this small Georgia town, so I attempted to close my 5/3 bank account in favor of opening a new account at another bank that has branches in this small town. When I attempted to close the account, I learned that I had a debt to 5/3 to the tune of around $2, 200.00. That was a valid debt. Fortunately, I was traveling to St. Louis which has a few 5/3 branches, so I went to a branch and paid them the entire amount to bring all the debt to ZERO and asked them to close the account. Well, apparently, by the time the $2, 200 hit that account, a charge for Overdraft Protection was hit that account, so that brought that account to negative 35.00. I was not aware that this occurred and thought that my 5/3 account was resolved and closed.

Several months later, I got a call from 5/3 indicating that I owed them around $130.00 (because they kept charging that account Overdraft Protection every month from the time I "thought" I had closed the account). Of course, I was upset, but I opted to roll-over and pay the money. Fortunately, I was still traveling to St.Louis and went to the same 5/3 branch and had them pull up the account to get the current amount owed (again, around $130.00), and paid them the money and requested that they close the account again. Well, the same thing happened! Apparently, between the time I physically handed the cashier the money (and again requested they close the account), but before the 130 was applied, another Overdraft Protection fee was applied...and of course, that brought the account to a negative balance. Of course, I was not aware this had occurred until a couple of months later in June 2010, I got a call from 5/3 to say that I owed them more money ($77.00 this time). At this point, I became very upset, but tried to reason with the 5/3 representative by walking them through the sequence of events. My arguments fell upon deaf ears and the representative (as well as others in subsequent phone calls) insisted that I needed to pay the money before the account could be closed. At this point, I just kept telling the representatives that I refuse to pay any more money, they needed to waive the fees and close the account.

Eventually, the calls stopped and I forgot about the whole matter. Well, last week, I got a letter from an attorney out of Colorado called Lukehart & Associates demanding payment of $785.00 (as of the date December 27, 2010) to resolve the 5/3 matter. Incredible! I am not sure how the amount this attorney claims I owe went from 77.00 to 785.00 in just 6-7 months, but that is what this attorney stated in his letter. I responded to his letter with a letter of my own and sent it registered mail and walked through the entire scenario. I also demanded a full accounting of the claims and suggested that he recommend to his client (5/3 Bank), that they drop the matter. Of course, I fully expect the attorney to continue to pursue this matter, I am sure it is going to cost me more money one way or another.

Anyone who has a suggestion of how to fight back against this harrassment, I am certainly open to suggestions.