FIFTH THIRD BANK

After ending a twenty year banking relationship with a mega bank,I thought giving this bank a chance to earn our buisness was worth a shot. They demonstrated enough incompetence to convince me that this is a bank I will never use even thouhg they seems to offer more competitive rates than others.

Initially, we were satisfied with Fifth Third Bank, in fact all our personal banking was with Fifth Third. We had an auto loan that still had a few years on it when we moved to Raleigh, continued making the payments, and one day, I had a phone call from Fifth Third saying that we owed them one additional months payment. I got copies of the cashed check that they claimed to be missing, they said no it was another month. Finally after many calls back and forth, they said that they had received only a portion of a payment many months before (but claimed that they didn't have my address so they couldn't let me know that timely). (At this point, they had received 2 years worth of my checks with my current Raleigh home address on them for the payment, hard to believe they didn't notice that). When the payment in question had cleared, it was encoded by the bank for $20.00 instead of $200, so the difference is what the bank was short. Fifth Third added all kinds of late charges, additional fees and penalties, turned our account over to collection, had collectors calling here day and night, evenings and Sundays, to the point that we had to hire an attorney to write a letter in an attempt to straighten out this mess. Fifth Thirds response was that when I reconciled my checkbook, I had to have known that a check was miscoded. They continued to harass myself and my husband, marked late payments on our credit report and all the rest. When thankfully the lease was up, we returned the auto and the tow truck driver said he had heard MANY horror stories of dealing with Fifth Third. We ultimately filed paperwork with the Attorney General in Ohio and North Carolina (3 separate times) to get Fifth Third to stop harassing us. I think there may still be a mark on our credit history because of what they called a "payment more than 30 days late". We just want to warn potential new customers that Fifth Third Bank is not a bank you should consider, with all the good banks that there are in the Raleigh area.