I had a payroll account at a bank years ago that went dormant for awhile (a time similar, but not as severe as this). The account went negative due to fees for a couple of months. So we get busy, I go in friday morning and give them CASH, write paychecks and later the guys are saying that they won't cash the checks.
I go in and they tell me the account is gone because it went inactive. I said, well, it's active again let's go. They say I need to open a NEW account. So I say ok, give me my money and I'll do that. They say, What money? I say the money in the account that doesn't exist. They say that they can't give me the money. I say if I have no account, then my money must be in a drawer somewhere so just give it to me. They say they can't.
I say I brought in CASH and handed it to them and they ACCEPTED it, and deposited it in a supposedly non-existent account but actually put it somewhere else, so give me the money. They say all deposits are sent to the home office in New York every day.
So I say, "You have OTHER money you can give me...it's CASH". They say they can't give me THAT money. This goes on for 15 minutes with me explaining louder and louder that I gave them cash, they took it and now tell me I don't have an account but will NOT give me the money back.
Finally the manager comes out to see what's up and takes me aside. It turns out they're "not supposed to do this" but they have a little "slush" account. She took the money from that and gave it to me. Needless to say I didn't go back.
There's no substitute for getting politely LOUD.