If You use Wachovia, Watch Out!

Looking for Wachovia's routing number? Your not alone - it turns out there are several valid routing numbers for Wachovia a result of mergers and acquisitions.

Over the weekend I ran into a problem trying to perform transactions with my Wachovia checking account. I discovered that an online payment made through a credit card company web site from my Wachovia checking account was returned.

After 3 calls to my credit card's customer service I only had a little more insight into the problem. All they could tell me was that they submitted the transfer to my bank, but Wachovia apparently took the money back and the credit card company couldn't tell me why. I looked at my Wachovia checking account and there was no record of the transaction out or back in, so I assumed that the credit card company had just screwed something up.

However, this morning I tried to make another online transfer through a different web site and this site came back and told me that my routing number appeared to be invalid. Apparently Wachovia has stopped some of their routing numbers because these same routing numbers worked for me 2 weeks ago! (Wachovia apparently has several valid routing numbers as a result of mergers and acquisitions)

This is a very frustrating problem for me because I basically do all my banking transactions online. The worst part is I have already been levied a $35 return payment fee by the credit card company, and probably more are on the way since I have several transactions that I have submitted in the last week.

Arghhh!!!!!! Anyone else have this problem?

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Comments (5)

DATE: 5:14 PM
One of my friends had the same problem last week. She was also trying to pay a credit card bill. Luckily, the credit card company removed the fee.

Posted by Singleguymoney | September 10, 2006 3:05 PM

DATE: 10:48 AM
Was this a "pull" transaction? In other words, did you sign up with your checking account info at the credit card site, and let them "pull" the money from your checking account? Or did you send a check from your check ing account, and they rejected it?

Posted by ncnblog | September 10, 2006 3:05 PM

DATE: 3:19 PM
By your definition its was a "pull" transaction. It was the 4th I did "pulling" from/to the exact same accounts this month (paying off one of my 0% APR BT offers) and the last payment was rejected. Weird huh? The best part is Wachovia has no record of it and the credit card company says they can't tell me what happened - only Wachovia can. I'm still going back and forth with them - no results yet.

Posted by 2million | September 10, 2006 3:05 PM

DATE: 4:44 PM
I use them as well, and they lost a payment that I made...TO A LOAN THAT THEY HAD MADE TO ME...funny, huh? I think in the transition from SouthTrust, Wachovia changed some internal stuff. I use their bill pay, and just send multiple cc payments a month that way. (BTW, Dave Ramsey suggest never allowing cc access to your checking accounts, b/c they are notorious for taking more or less than they are supposed to.) love the blog, ncnblog.com

Posted by ncnblog | September 10, 2006 3:05 PM

DATE: 9:25 AM
Good news - my credit card company finally caved and refunded the $35 fee. So instead of continuing to uncover what the problem is I am just going to use Wachovia Online Billpay to send the last payment to the credit card company.I like the idea of not giving the cc access to my checking accounts - I had considered that before when I didn't have an alternative (free online billpay) and decided the benefit was worth it. However now that I could use the online billpay for free there isn't really a benefit to giving the cc access to my checking account. Thanks for the suggestion.

Posted by 2million | September 10, 2006 3:05 PM