it's over

I used to have an account with Bank of Montreal and a prepaid MasterCard with them, but they started pulling a lot of crap with the MasterCard by holding back on charging transactions I had not authorized and then debiting them the second I added funds to the card for a different purpose. So I tried to do the simplest and lowest-fuss thing and close my accounts with them but they refused. I really had no choice but to walk away from those accounts. They kept sending me letters but I kept returning them unopened. That stopped, I think, about two months ago.

So I opened a new account with CIBC at a branch my father and brother have used for decades. I deposited three monthly disability checks in that account. Today, while checking the account online, I found a debit dated March 3, 2015 attributed to "IBB Collections Vancouver/Vanco" and contsituting 80% of the total funds that had been in my account. I don't have a phone because my phone is a prepaid that ran out of airtime and I certainly can't afford to waste money on airtime now, so I sent them an online request to explain that transaction to me and examine it for fraud. I'm waiting for them to respond.

My room and board are taken care of so I'll have food and a place to sleep until I get my next disability check in about 28 days, but beyond that I'll be pretty much broke until then. I"ll also have to default on some bills. I'm not upset because I'm accustomed to the world treating me this way, so it just rolls off my back now, but I figure it counts for more than just a typical first-world problem and was worth documenting in a public place. One major reason places such as banks hide this kind of conduct when they commit it is not to "protect the privacy of customers" but so that there is no publicly accessible record of their activities. Obviously it's in my interest for there to be such a record, so I'm creating it in a few places online.

Thank you for reading.

Just a tip, if you owe collectors, your best bet is not to use a bank account that often. They will take your money. My suggestion is to use a prepaid card. They're much less hassle.

if you can go into a branch ... get there as soon as possible ... questions answered

I had opened an account at canada trust years ago ... large withdrawal found on friday morning ... turned out the account number was the same but transit(branch) number was different
I was told it would be the following week before they could fix it ... I refused to leave until it was fixed ... they fixed it right there and then

Yup. Don't trust banks. When I was 19 a bank that I used for college screwed me over pretty badly. I haven't used one since. I have a few free accounts with the minimum balance in them just so that I can cash checks for free.

You owe money, it's a collection agency. There is no fraud on their part, this has to do with money you owe someone, ie loads, credit cards, etc. Any fraud would be from whoever sent you to collections. They must have got a court order to be able to withdraw the money from your account like that. From what you said with your MC your problem may be there since you were returning items unopened to them their next course of action would be to go through a collection agency. There is little you will be able to do unless since you stopped any contact with MC to rectify the situation.

I have since learned that IBB is a student debt collector. I last attended college in 1991, filed with a trustee in 1995, and received a certificate of completion in 1998. In 2012 I contacted Canada Student Loans and they informed me in a letter that the 1998 certificate meant my slate was clean and I no longer owed anything. They also advised me to contact the Ontario Student Assistace Program separately. I did, and received no response. But I did check on the OSAP website in 2012 and discovered that I am again eligible for student loans through them, which means that I was no longer blacklisted. OSAP is infamous as the most incompetent and uninterested bureaucracy in the entire government so this is very likely a screwup on their part. Whatever. The law exists only to preserve the wealth of the wealthy, so a broke guy on disability can't fight huge bureaucracies that can afford expensive lawyers. I'm simply going to stop uding bank accounts and manage my money in non-banking ways.

The fact that my bank permitted them to seize part of a disability benefit surprises me. The law on student debt and disability benefits must have changed without my noticing. I thought the way the US treats disabled people was barbaric but this makes Canada significantly more so.

I hope you dispute this. If you have a letter stating that you do not owe any money then surely money cannot be then taken off you to pay what was written off. I would take the letter and go into the bank to speak with someone if I were you.

Katerina said:

I hope you dispute this. If you have a letter stating that you do not owe any money then surely money cannot be then taken off you to pay what was written off. I would take the letter and go into the bank to speak with someone if I were you.

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The bank has an interest in keeping the rich debt collector happy. It has almost no interest in keeping a disability recipient happy, because of the difference in how much of our money we let the bank handle. When people have an interest they don't care about fairness and justice. They protect their interests. The bank would just find excuses to avoid doing anything about this, and I'd be flagging myself as a guy who raises a fuss. Broke people who raise a fuss tend to get taken care of on the quiet, and nobody ever finds out we were taken care of. I'm not going to, metaphorically speaking, commit suicide by launching a dispute. It would only end badly for me.

mickey said:

Katerina said:

I hope you dispute this. If you have a letter stating that you do not owe any money then surely money cannot be then taken off you to pay what was written off. I would take the letter and go into the bank to speak with someone if I were you.

Click to expand...

The bank has an interest in keeping the rich debt collector happy. It has almost no interest in keeping a disability recipient happy, because of the difference in how much of our money we let the bank handle. When people have an interest they don't care about fairness and justice. They protect their interests. The bank would just find excuses to avoid doing anything about this, and I'd be flagging myself as a guy who raises a fuss. Broke people who raise a fuss tend to get taken care of on the quiet, and nobody ever finds out we were taken care of. I'm not going to, metaphorically speaking, commit suicide by launching a dispute. It would only end badly for me.

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Conspiracy theory believer much? Seems a bit fantastic that you'd be whacked for raising a dispute against this.

There's no conspiracy, and there's no need to marginalize me by using the knee-jerk reference to conspiracy theory, which is useful only to discredit someone by making them look bad. It's the same as if you were saying about someone else: "Oh, she has a schizophrenia diagnosis, so when she tells you the sky is blue she's just having symptoms. The sky is really orange."

Although there's no conspiracy, people DO protect their interests. That's all I was saying.

mickey said:

There's no conspiracy, and there's no need to marginalize me by using the knee-jerk reference to conspiracy theory, which is useful only to discredit someone by making them look bad. It's the same as if you were saying about someone else: "Oh, she has a schizophrenia diagnosis, so when she tells you the sky is blue she's just having symptoms. The sky is really orange."

Although there's no conspiracy, people DO protect their interests. That's all I was saying.

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In my opinion its just not very likely they'd kill you for disputing it. It is an unrealistic consequence.

SophiaGrace said:

mickey said:

There's no conspiracy, and there's no need to marginalize me by using the knee-jerk reference to conspiracy theory, which is useful only to discredit someone by making them look bad. It's the same as if you were saying about someone else: "Oh, she has a schizophrenia diagnosis, so when she tells you the sky is blue she's just having symptoms. The sky is really orange."

Although there's no conspiracy, people DO protect their interests. That's all I was saying.

Click to expand...

In my opinion its just not very likely they'd kill you for disputing it. It is an unrealistic consequence.

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I think he meant more that he thinks he wouldn't win. Hence the "metaphorically speaking" part of the sentence.

TheRealCallie said:

SophiaGrace said:

mickey said:

There's no conspiracy, and there's no need to marginalize me by using the knee-jerk reference to conspiracy theory, which is useful only to discredit someone by making them look bad. It's the same as if you were saying about someone else: "Oh, she has a schizophrenia diagnosis, so when she tells you the sky is blue she's just having symptoms. The sky is really orange."

Although there's no conspiracy, people DO protect their interests. That's all I was saying.

Click to expand...

In my opinion its just not very likely they'd kill you for disputing it. It is an unrealistic consequence.

Click to expand...

I think he meant more that he thinks he wouldn't win. Hence the "metaphorically speaking" part of the sentence.

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I'm unsure, but I'll let it go.

mickey said:

The bank has an interest in keeping the rich debt collector happy. It has almost no interest in keeping a disability recipient happy, because of the difference in how much of our money we let the bank handle. When people have an interest they don't care about fairness and justice. They protect their interests. The bank would just find excuses to avoid doing anything about this, and I'd be flagging myself as a guy who raises a fuss. Broke people who raise a fuss tend to get taken care of on the quiet, and nobody ever finds out we were taken care of. I'm not going to, metaphorically speaking, commit suicide by launching a dispute. It would only end badly for me.

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And why would you not dispute it? Because you know you really owe it and just didn't ever think you'd pay it? Because if a bank took monies from me that I really, truly did not owe, they'd see hell raised from me.

My guy's mother had a situation similar to this, except, they really did owe the money that was taken. I tried, to the best of my ability, but the fact was it was owed, and rightfully so, taken. She didn't want to admit it because it was a debt made by her deceased husband, and she didn't think they'd come after her for it.