MINNEAPOLIS — Insufficient funds. Declined. Those were a couple of the notifications many TCF Bank debit card holders received Friday night and Saturday morning in the wake of the company's merger with Huntington Bank.
"Went to fuel up the truck, went in, tried to pay, debit card declined," said TCF customer Matthew Koscielski.
Koscielski is one of several customers who say they were notified ahead of time that online banking would be down through the transition period over the weekend, but could continue using TCF and Huntington Bank ATM's with no ATM transaction fees.
However, customers say they never received any sort of outage warning involving debit cards.
"Especially, you know, the day of payday, nevertheless," said Koscielski.
Many customers took to social media voicing their concerns. One customer wrote: "Its shameful, people are trying to buy food, medications, ubers and lyfts with no one to contact."
"It wasn't until people started complaining that they finally this morning started to answer those complaints," said Koscielski.
The company responded on Twitter Saturday morning explaining there was a conversion error Friday night where debit cards were temporarily unavailable, even though the old TCF debit cards were supposed to be active through Nov. 4th.
"After while, yeah, it got a little scary and it's like, 'What's going on here? You know, where's our money?" said Koscielski. He went on to say, "no gas or, you know, risk of being stranded that kind of ... irritated me."
While irritating and frustrating, for many it's been a lesson in being financially prepared with a backup plan when all else fails.
"I always keep a little bit extra spare cash because I understand you know technology stuff fails," said Koscielski.
Koscielski mentioned he was able to use his debit card as credit, which worked.
As of Saturday night, neither TCF Bank or Huntington Bank commented on when the error will be fixed.
Late Saturday afternoon, a few customers told KARE 11 they were able to make purchases on their debit cards again.