First Niagara Bank

I banked here for 20 years. This is the 3^rd name on the sign. I have (until next week) both personal and business accounts. In the beginning it was a friendly and helpful local bank. If I needed a check cleared right away, they would do it for me. Deposits (cash) and ACH debits all cleared at the end of the business day. Over the past few months I noticed all the employees that I had worked with for years began to disappear, and were being replaced by new faces. Accounts were converted to other types with new different minimum balance requirements. Yesterday I had an ACH debit scheduled to pay my health insurance. I checked my balance early in the morning and walked into the the branch office at 10:30am, and made a CASH deposit, telling the teller that I was depositing CASH because I had an incoming ACH debit coming that day and needed to balance the account (The debit was not showing on her screen at that time. She was looking at the balance.) Later that afternoon my online banking showed that the ACH bounced. I went into the branch office and was given a raft lies about how this could have happened. Everyone I talked to had a different story: «cash isn’t necessarily credited immediately», «the balance shown on online banking is not necessarily correct», «the balance the teller sees is not necessarily correct», «debits can come in at any time, and be processed at any time» (actually, the only true statement made). This was all smoke and mirrors because I could tell by the looks on their faces that they were all well aware that First Niagara is one of the banks that engages in the unscrupulous practice of «rearranging» debits and credits so that accounts appear to be overdrawn even when they are not, and «customers» are assessed fees (or the ACH is bounced). That’s how they squeeze money out of their «customers», especially the working poor who live paycheck to paycheck. What a proud profession banking is. The teller was too embarrassed to even look at me because she was ashamed to be part of the scam. I would have given them zero stars, but I had to click one.