MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—A small online banking mistake temporarily cost one credit union member thousands of dollars.
Bruce Braunsten, a member of First Tech FCU here, made an error when paying his recent $308.44 Bank of America credit card bill though online banking.
He left out a decimal point before submitting his payment, instead paying $30,844. Braunsten said he corrected the problem, and then submitted only a single, correct payment, KATU.com reported.
But Braunsten got two withdrawals from his credit union account: one for the regular payment and the other for $30,844. Braunsten said Bank of America took the charge off his credit card but the money wasn't returned to his credit union account. He said both financial institutions are looking into the matter.
Braunsten told the news station that while the FIs say the issue will be resolved—the CU correcting the erroneous withdrawal and Bank of American returning the incorrect payment to his CU account, he is concerned his recent IRS payment won’t be covered by his drained account.
“And First Tech said, 'Hopefully, we'll cover your IRS payment’,” Braunsten told the news station.
KATU said the $9.5-billion First Tech and Bank of America are both looking into how Braunsten's payment mistake went through, even though he said he made only one authorized payment for the correct amount.
Bank of America released a statement to KATU News that said “this was an electronic payment made via automated clearinghouse. As soon as the customer contacted us, we followed up to reverse the payment the customer had submitted for the incorrect amount. Typically, we need to ensure that the sending bank has not already reversed the transaction before we can send the refund. We’ve reached out to the customer to further assist with expediting the refund and are waiting to hear back.”
First Tech Federal Credit Union sent a statement to KATU News which said, “This is a Bank of America issue. Bank of America promised him that this issue would be resolved, however they have yet to rectify the situation. We are doing everything we can to help our member resolve his issue with Bank of America.”
Meanwhile, Braunsten said First Tech is restoring all the money to his account even though the issue isn’t resolved, so he doesn’t have any problems paying bills.