Mr. Money Mustache says his bank account was frozen at a really inconvenient time

This is not what you want to have happen right before you buy a house.

Pete Adeney, who runs the popular personal-finance blog “Mr. Money Mustache” and also uses that as his pen name, tweeted this week that Capital One












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 had frozen his bank account, with more than $309,000 of cash in it.

Adeney said he is planning to use that money to purchase a home.

“This is insane to do this to a customer unilaterally — their entire financial life is frozen, entire house deal could be derailed,” he tweeted. “Other people could lose their primary house, cars, incur tax penalties, etc. And you can’t even give me access to a person to unlock it.”

He was trying to solve the problem with Capital One, he said, but waited for approximately 40 minutes on hold until he could speak to customer service.

He even threatened to switch banks. “I saw one recommendation for Schwab checking,” he said. “Anyone tried SoFi Money as a new style of checking account?”

On Wednesday, two days after the initial problem, he tweeted an update. “I was surprised and impressed to get a call from the Capital One security leader, with a plan to change the customer response and eliminate the phone menu/hold time issue,” he said. “Rare openness for a big company.”

Capital One explained that his account was frozen because of standard fraud protection measures, he said. When he attempted to transfer $300,000 out of his account, it triggered the fraud prevention system at the bank, Adeney said.

“Capital One takes customer and account security seriously and we appreciate that our customer understands,” a spokeswoman for Capital One said. “We’re glad we were able to directly address our customer’s concern and develop a process improvement.”

That’s understandable, he said. But he wanted better communication. “My sole complaint is that they froze my account and then only told me about it by an automated email, leaving only a 1-800 phone number for me to call them back,” Adeney told MarketWatch in an email. “And then even this number just led to a voice menu, eventually to an employee who wasn’t empowered to fix my problem, who then put me on hold for over 30 minutes. Twice!”

He was pleased with the final outcome, though. “It’s quite a happy ending in this case, and as long as the problem ends up solved quickly for other people, I see no reason to cancel my own account.”

With his more than 93,000 Twitter












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  followers and popularity in the personal-finance community, Mr. Money Mustache isn’t a typical bank customer.

If you’re a customer who plans to deposit or withdraw a large amount of money, you may want to let your bank know in advance, said Liz Weston, a certified financial planner at the personal-finance company NerdWallet. “This small step can help you avoid big headaches and ensure you always have access to your money when you need it.”

“It is best to reach out to the financial institution as quickly as possible, via phone, social media, or in a branch, in order to get someone’s attention,” he said. “The automated system isn’t going to be able to tell you why this happened, but a service representative with the ability to verify your identity can work to get your access restored.”

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