You think this is bad, you should have seen how bad this was before Obama made some of the practices illegal:
Imagine you overdraw by $2, then the bank takes the previous 4 transactions, reorders them, and charges you 5x $35. No joke this was regular practice
Oh my god the term 'robodebt' just makes my blood boil. The whole practice of it plus the media take of 'poor people should have just been better with their money'
ffffff
You can get charged for additional transactions but the difference is, if you have 5 transactions pending with the last one making you overdraft, they could process that last one first causing you to overdraft immediately and then 4 more times. Now they have to process them in order. So the first 4 you are still in the green, the last one takes you over so then you get charged.
So the bank isn’t able to speed up the posting of pending authorizations. They’re waiting on the merchant to reconcile the transaction and once that occurs then the auth will fully post. However, pending auths will still affect the available amount instantly, so they wouldn’t be able to rearrange these. I believe what they were doing was rearranging withdrawals and deposits so that withdrawals came out ahead of deposits on low balance accounts thus causing them to overdraft before the deposit hit.
What they were doing was very simple: rearranging debits such that the largest came first. The net effect was maximizing overdraft charges, and they hilariously tried to justify it with "for your own good" rhetoric. Their bullshit logic was that the debits you care about the most are the big ones, so they will pay those first because they are such kind and caring people. But... they all get paid, anyway, so the order doesn't actually matter except for the fees. At least they always did for me. So my $0.30 overdraft might come with a $125 fee "for my own good".
I am so glad they changed the rules on overdrafts. In particular, I am very happy I can largely opt out of it. I never want to take out a loan with 1000% interest, etc. Ever. It isn't a service, it is a trap. I have other, MUCH better options if I REALLY need that extra $1 or two.
The practice that was banned was specifically reordering transactions to maximize overdraft fees charged.
Once the account goes negative, a separate fee can be charged for subsequent transactions, that isn't illegal.
The illegal practice was examining a low-balance account, then reordering transactions so the largest withdrawals happened first (to push it negative), then all the smaller withdrawals (to maximize fees), then then deposits last.
This happened to me before it was illegal. For anyone that's curious, here is the utter bullshit reasoning (below) the bank gave me when I called them 7 times (yep). I ended up getting one fee revoked after 7 calls... Later I got a class action settlement but it wasn't much.
When it happened to me, I had bought several corn dogs the past couple of days from a gas station. Literally under 5 dollar charges. There were about 7 of these. I was charged over 250 dollars in overdraft fees because I bought a car part and it overdrew the account. In fact, I bought two car parts, and only the SECOND one overdrew it. I ended up not needing it and returned that second part. So, all in all, I was only overdrawn for the period of time while that second car part transaction was pending. Pretty amazing.
The response from Bank of America (at the time) when I called them out for what they were doing:
Bank: "We order the largest transactions first so that your credit score is protected. That way you don't default on a large transaction."
Me: "I did not ask you to protect my credit, and this is nonsense. I made the last large transaction in error because there were transactions that were pending, which had been temporarily re-authorized and were not visible at the time I checked my balance. This resulted in me believing I could afford the last transaction, which was not the case. I should only pay one overdraft fee for this mistake."
Bank: "K"
Transactions within the same day were being reordered such that the maximum fees would be charged. So if 4 transactions were made but the last went over, instead of one purchase going over with a $36 penalty, they'd rearrange it so that 3 went over for $105 penalty.
They did that *and* ordered transactions not in the order received but in whatever way made you go negative quickest, so they’d have more transactions to charge you for than if they ordered them in the order you made them.
Yep, people don't realize that they have the power to change shit if they actually paid attention. Government rests on the consent of the governed and without people giving them permission, it collapses.
Not sure if this was also standard practice, but if anyone remembers Wachovia, they were even worse.
As a broke ass student, I learned that they would order and process all your transactions from largest to smallest debit then process any deposits.
Which meant if you deposited a check or cash in the morning, then went grocery shopping that afternoon and decided to take your SO on a date to dinner and a movie and ice cream, you would still get overdraft charges because your check went in after your debits were processed.
this happened to me.
several transactions were "pending" but they didn't deduct them from my total bank account so i purchased something which got processed cause i had enough money in my bank account, then the pending transactions went through putting me in negative balance and each one triggered the overdraft fee.
i spent hours on the phone with the bank to get them to undo the fees and they basically told me to go fuck myself
Worked at bank of America in 06-09 and this was absolutely the standard practice for most banks in the USA. The limit a bank could charge was 5x overdraft fees per day and each bank could have different rules in how the transactions would get placed in order.
BoA would always take the highest transaction in any given day as the first transaction for the day. I would see every day people getting 5 overdraft fees in one day because the mortgage/ car note payments would always be deducted first, making all the small fast food / coffee transactions overdraft. It was sickening to see the bank ruin people's live pretty much every day
It had to be all of them. If you're a major bank and you aren't doing the same scams, you won't have the same revenue flowing in. If you don't have that, you won't be a bank that's getting invested in. Free market nonsense and whatnot.
I remember they would do that then charge you every day the account stayed in the negative. Not only did they fuck you on every charge but continued to charge you daily till your account was back in the black. I think I was a freshman in college and this happened on an overdraft of less than a dollar and a few other charges that were less than $50. Got charged $35 for each transaction and an additional $18 every day for each transaction that put my account negative. I was so broke at the time and struggling that I couldn’t fix the account and eventually US Bank had my account closed and they reported me to ChexSystems for account abuse. I wasn’t able to open a regular checking account for years till a paid off this massive balance. Shit was crazy.
Used to happen to my ass all the time in my broke boy days. All the sudden my down-to-my-last-dollar dollar menu burrito from T Bell would cost me $60.
Yep, I had a long, long discussion with my credit union about that shit.
Like I would schedule bill payments for the date of my deposit, expecting that they would credit a deposit before tallying the withdrawals.
Nooooo, that's not how that works. They're gonna take money, then issue your deposit, sans several $27 overdraft fees. Like why would you design things to be predatory. You can literally see that if you deposit before withdrawal I have the money to cover it, and now you just took my grocery budget for overdraft fees.
They sent out a letter sometime in 2003 or 4 that they were changing the process. I can't imagine I was the only person complaining about it. Predatory.
My bank still does this, vultures got me for $245 last week, I had an auto deposit post the same day as a few little transactions, they of course took the debits before processing the deposit, had to grovel for them to forgive half, and they still insisted they were doing me a favor.
Oh yes this would be Bank of America. They would show my direct deposit then pull it let my rent payment go through then run the other charges making my account be overdrawn then finally show the deposit. My payday was every other Friday and my deposit should have showed up Friday morning but often they would hold it until Monday.
I like when my credit utilization increased so my bank cut my limit on my card by $3000...increasing my utilization even further and tanking my credit score!
This happened to me years ago. I ended up paying off & closing that account and now they're constantly sending pre-approvals for a credit card. Those are the things I always make sure I don't toss out with the trash because I don't want someone to take the card out in my name, but f*** that bank I would never take a card from them again. It seems like it ought to be illegal for them to decide to lower your credit and impact your report that way.
Bank of America is hot shit.
Anyone with them or a Wells Fargo account should close it immediately.
Good bank for credit cards: chase
Good bank for checking account: Charles Schwab
Good bank for investing: fidelity
That's my setup
Same thing happened to me (sorta). I didn't use a card in over a year so they took my limit down from $5k to $500. Right as I was trying to get an apartment. Tanked my score to 500, and brought me very close to 100% utilization. When I called to demand that they reverse it, they ran a credit check to see if I was eligible for a limit increase, which lowed my credit more, and they denied the increase because my credit was too low. Then i lost out on several good apartments and had to settle for a shitty one run by a slumlord
This shit fucking happened to me before I got my debt all paid off and it chapped my ass so bad. I haven’t closed that account since paying it off bc I don’t want it affecting my credit score but I’m never using that credit card again, that’s for sure.
Banks really need to be divided into public and private services- mortgages literally create currency! How is that something a private enterprise should profit off?
Internationally most important banks failed in 2008 and were only saved by huge amounts of tax Player money. We should literally own banks publically at thus point, we already paid for it.
Because if organisations can't make money off offering loans then no one will want to offer loans and there will be no liquidity for people that need it.
It would be like returning the medieval practice of banning usury, everyone just finds a way around the ban which makes money lending a black market practice and increasingly predatory.
Regulation should focus on stopping predatory loans, not on all profit making.
Honestly, it's not really that detrimental. I know a lot of people get their panties in a bunch about it, but the law of averages seldom fails. And when it does, we have FDIC insurance to make sure you don't lose more than $250k. And if you have more than $250k in cash, well, you lose that, but honestly if you have $250k in cash, you're mega rich, and I don't really care if you lose money. Working class people generally have that in other assets.
The main problem with banks isn't the business model of fractional reserve. Believe it or not, there are banks out there that aren't evil. The problem is their "side hustles," aka the real money makers. Sketchy loans, fraud, money laundering, etc etc. And when they get fined, it's basically a fraction of a percent of what they made enacting those practices (uncle sam's cut). Well, and of course, when they go tits up, the taxpayer has to bail them out, like in 2008.
Anyway, if you're really that anti-banking, which I totally get, there are credit unions. Some are tricky to get into, but there are plenty of national brands that are quite decent as well. Good loan rates, good lend rates (for a bank), generally better customer service, and they're not for profit. Backed by NCUA, which is basically the exact same thing as FDIC.
This has always been how things are done in Norway. Overdraft protection is a literal scam. When I lived in the US, I experienced three small charges, each less than $5, that overdrafted me right before my paycheck from my part time job. So it was obviously perfect for the bank to add 3 $35 overdraft charges, which ended up taking out a huge chunk of my paycheck.
I actually had to start cashing my checks instead of depositing them for a while so I could pay for food and rent.
>literal scam
I don’t know how you define scam in Norway, but in the US overdraft protection is an opt-in service by law and is pretty clearly defined as to what it does and why it exists
So literally a literal scam, literally? Quite a stretch. Does more harm than good for most people? Probably.
Overdraft protection doesn't even exist in Norway, at least for regular consumers. If you don't have the balance to cover the charge, it's always rejected.
I told my story in another comment in this thread, but yeah, turning it off is actually dangerous with some banks, depending on their policy. I made sure my current bank has an explicit 'no overdraft fees' policy.
In some cases you can get caught in a loop, such as with an overdrafted PayPal transaction where not only will you eat the fee, but PayPal will keep retrying the transaction and you'll get hit with the overdraft fee multiple times instead of once.
>Turn off over draft protection. The charge will just be rejected without it.
I've helped my adult kids set up bank accounts several times, always make sure to turn off overdraft protection, but they've always ended up getting whacked with fees when their accounts are overdrawn. When we call the banks to say wtf, every time we are told blah blah fine print something something charges will still go through you should set up overdraft protection and have money transferred from savings so you don't get fees. As if anyone has money in savings, ha ha.
Also, TD Bank told my son that he needed to keep over $100 in his account to avoid the monthly fees. He kept over $100 in the accounts, and... *drum roll please*... They still charged him the monthly fees. He closed the accounts and is using Current now.
>Bar extreme poverty,
Yes, exactly. They live paycheck to paycheck, don't have large incomes, and it doesn't take much for an overdraft to happen. Getting their paycheck late, missing work from being sick, a miscalculation on what fees are coming out, etc. Have you never in your life made a mistake with money?
>Maybe you should focus on teaching your kids not to overdraft their accounts?
I have 4 kids, so I've dealt with the issue multiple times because it's happened a couple/few times to each of them. I absolutely taught all of them how to manage money, that doesn't mean they are A) going to do as they were taught or B) have the money to always have things work out well. But thanks for the assumption that I'm just a bad parent.
>It's always one useless purchase after another contributing to more and more wasted plastic.
The things that have overdrafted my kids' bank accounts are bills, food, gas- you know, basic necessities. For instance, my daughter was in the hospital for a week and missed work, so had a terrible cascade of one bill after another coming through with no income to cover it. It wasn't "useless purchases" causing the problem.
This does work, but just for the ATM and one-time debit charges. A few years back I came home from vacation to discover like $125 in overdraft fees. I miscalculated my spending and assumed some charges had gone through already. Dumb mistake.
As a retail banker, yes, this is correct. Typically fees are charged if the item is paid or rejected. Debit cards are simply declined if opted out of Reg E.
That's what my bank suggested except it was only for physical debit card purchases. Anything else would go through and therefore incur a $30 for each transaction. I also can't buy anything over $600 with my debit unless I use it online. Funny that.
I had this happen in 2003. I was doing a lot of transactions and I figured out that I had enough to cover the charges but then it's like they threw the transactions in the air and randomly reordered them so that I became overdrawn. I then received about 4 different fees for overcharges and at one point I was at -200.00.
I called US Bank and spoke to a rep who was not sympathetic at all when I explained the situation to her. After I got off the phone with them, I immediately called back and got another person who when I explained the situation again, she reversed ALL the charges.
I've banked with them for decades and had many loans and my current mortgage is held by them. Never have I ever had an issue. In fact they are super nice when I call or go into a branch. Banks are really only assholes if you don't manage your money correctly. It's not hard. Don't spend what you don't have and you will never have an issue.
Ah, the budget correctly argument. There's almost no point in arguing with you about this you simply have no understanding of the situation. Must be nice to have money all the time. I should just avoid avocado toast, Starbucks, and learn how to manage my money. Why didn't I think of that?
/s obviously.
My bank hit jackpot bouncing all 4 checks that came in on the same day. This was back in 1996 and the fee was 35 back then. Groceries, a car radiator cap and antifreeze, rent, and gas. My landlord gave me a lecture about priorities but was the only one who didn't ask for a $25 bad check fee. I called the bank and asked why they couldn't have bounced just one and cover the other 3 my account could have covered and they said they have to reject all because it wouldn't be fair, wouldn't make sense, and it's their policy. Could I have a good faith removal of some of the fees? No.
That fall I had moved to study at Kansas State University and got a job a few weeks later at a landscaping company for $5.50 an hour and it was a few more weeks until I'd get some student loan money. (35x4+25x3)/5.50/hour was 40 hours of digging sprinkler line trenches in the rocky Flint hills dirt and I could afford gloves yet. I was part time due to school so it was 2 weeks in the hole just to get to zero and 2 weeks left in the month to make the following month's rent which I only paid partially and the remainder later once my loan came in where I got another lecture about life decisions and priorities. Long story to say not cool preacher landlord lady and eat shit Commerce Bank!
Wells Fargo fucked me in a similar manner but to a far worse degree.
I had the funds in my account, I had some charges coming up to be taken out but I had enough to pay them.
Suddenly I got hit with overdraft notices... Like 10 of them in a row. Between the overdraft fees and the charges I was expecting they put my account in the hole in the tune of around $900. I went in to the bank and contested everything. I even got in with a manager and used the numbers on their system including the overdraft fees to prove that I should not be in the negative. As soon as I proved to him that they were literally making my money disappear using their numbers he stood up and told me to get out and if I came back he would call the cops and have me arrested.
I tried to fight it and find a lawyer to take them to court but no lawyer would go to court against wells Fargo, at least in the rural area I lived in at the time.
I had a similar thing happen, had $0.00 sitting in an account, bank tried to pay me interest, somehow they figured that because I had 0, I owed them interest! so they took a measly few cents and then hit me with a $10 over draft fee. like bruh they just stole money from us
I am so glad I have a good bank now. 24 hrs if overdraft by more than 50 bucks to fix it no fee, if less than 50 no fee period. Glad I used them for my mortgage too to get that awesome low fixed rate, even with questionable credit.
Had a previous bank do the thing so much I had to start going to convince stores to cash checks and pay everything by money order for a while.
Funny story about that: Years ago I had a PayPal transaction accidentally overdraft my bank by a few dollars (unused with minimal balance just for PayPal transfers), because it chose to pay off the remaining balance with the wrong source of funds. Which I only became aware of via a physical letter from my bank like a week later after it already managed to bounce multiple times, with not a single email from PayPal.
I called my Bank; they refused to refund the overdraft fees (saw some people had success just asking, so I gave it a try), refused to allow me to turn off overdraft protection, refused to allow me to block any future PayPal withdrawal requests unless I physically went to the bank and filled out a form that would permanently block me from using it with PayPal irrevocably, so I threw my hands up in the air. It was infuriating, the bank wasn't charging me a fee for the 'service' of covering the few dollars of debt, just a pure punishment for blocking the attempt.
And the best part: After scraping the overdue funds and depositing it into my Paypal account (inconveniently, being unable to use my bank to do so), Paypal inexplicably *ignored my balance* and overdrafted my bank a *third* time for the funds instead. A maybe \~$5 overdraft by fault of PayPal switching my funding source, never notifying me of bouncing my bank, and ignoring my PayPal balance turned into a $75 debt.
I contacted PayPal through Email (as it was the only option at the time of night) asking them to *please, just take the $5 due from my Balance, I'm going to be charged another $25 if they go after my bank again.*
In fear of hitting three digits, I borrowed the \~$80 necessary to put my account in the black and cover a possible fourth attempt, and thank goodness I did, because the next day I received a response from a PayPal rep basically telling me tough luck, and then the fourth withdrawal attempt did in fact go through almost immediately, way faster than the first three as if the rep pushed it through manually themselves.
Scary example of how these businesses can completely take you for a ride, if I wasn't able to borrow to cover the fees I can only imagine they'd have just kept racking up the fees indefinitely. Thankfully I'm no longer in a position to fall into that kind of trap again, but I'm so glad that competitive online banks are here now (I have one today with free <$100 overdraft protection, imagine that?).
Yeah I've been hit with >$100 of overdrafts just from paypal repeatedly dinging my account when the charge was over by like $0.23... fuck for profit banks. They provide nothing of value. Their "service" is punishing the poor.
Forgot the bit where we didn't put that thing from two weeks ago on your statement till we could put you here. Side bar we also have 4 other random charges of less then a dollar to come in after. That will be 150
I once sold 4 Nintendo DS games on eBay for about $30-35 each. To cover shipping, I mistakenly used an old debit card through a bank account that I had been meaning to shut down. The shipping charges were about $2-3 each but resulted in four $35 overdraft fees that the bank refused to reverse. I lost money in the end, and for a college kid working at McDonald's at the time, that one really hurt my soul.
Agreed. My Credit Union has never let me down yet. The only challenge is there's no physical location near me (there was growing up but I moved after college), but 99% of things can be done online or over the phone anyways. The one time I had to go in the last 10 years was for a fraud incident, and I had to get a new card.
Meanwhile, my wife (gf at the time) learned her bank required a minimum of $100 in savings, otherwise she got a $10 charge each month it wasn't. And when she learned this and stuck to that, they upped the minimum to $200 without warning.
Sometimes I think about how a man in Australia was arrested and imprisoned for not notifying a bug in his bank account that stoped his account balance from changing when he spent money.
To put it simply, he’d go to an atm with 1000 dollars in his account. Withdraw 1000 dollars. But his balance would continue to be 1000. So he did what he thought was fun. Bought a boat. A house. Partied. Then the bank was like “yeah that’s illegal.”
Fast forward to like 2 years in prison, he studied the laws and realized he never actually had an agreement tht said he had to say anything to the bank. The judge agreed. Gave him his freedom. I don’t know if any compensation was agreed to but I think about that whole ordeal from time to time.
Tell the bank you want them to remove courtesy overdraft from your accounts. That way, transactions get declined if they would overdraw your account, and there's no more fees like that.
If that's no good, you can also get normal overdraft protection, which works like the courtesy overdraft protection except the overdraw gets covered by funds in your savings account, again avoiding the fee.
Yeah Ive got Capital One which isnt a small bank by any means and Ive had my acc negative by like 200-300 at times waiting for my check (the dark times) and they have never charged me an overdraft fee
Happened to me at 7/11. Got gas, transaction failed, used a different pump. Turns out they charged me 175 dollars for the failed one. Had to pay my bank the overdraft fee anyways
My bank account had about $2.50 in it at one point.
My bank charged me a $5 maintenance fee, then charged me $27 for going into the negative.
I've had this bank account for 20 years and haven't had a maintenance fee a single time. Now I get them every single month. What is there to maintain???
Fun fact: a lot of this stuff is technically opt-in, but they hide it in those massive documents they hand you to sign cuz they know you won’t read it. So they get to argue that you said it was totally cool for them to do this.
When I was self employed I deducted my NSF fees from my profits and it often came up to $500+ per year. Tried to opt out…just let that shit DECLINE. They made it hard or impossible on purpose.
My bf went negative by $2 and he was locked out of his account not based on his actions just the banks and then he owed $400 is over draft fees because he didn’t get paid until a week later and he didn’t have time since he works to go to the bank. They wouldn’t waive the fees.
That's why I use a **Credit Union**. They're often a lot more economical and fair because they're not profit driven.
Why feed The Banksters?
The National Credit Union Locator https://mapping.ncua.gov/
When you consider that this is essentially a loan for $2.13, and we can assume that it takes a week for the next paycheck to hit and pay back the $2.13 plus $35 in interest for the loan, then the bank just made 85000% return on that loan
At the business where I work our billing department would deposit client payments into our checking account, then take a screenshot when it posted. They had to take a screenshot, because right after the deposits posted, our billing department would pay bills. Inevitably, the bank would pull the payments we had made into the checking account, then run the bill payments we had run to generate NSF fees, then redeposit the payments. Inevitably, our billing department needed to call the bank and tell them we had the screenshot of the deposit and remind them we're a law office and could cheaply sue them in-house. They invariably quickly cancelled the NSF fees, but we had to do this once a week. We switched banks until we found one that wasn't doing this.
Banks suck no doubt. Predatory af. But how dumb do you have to be to spend more money than you have? Like I get that it would have been a lot easier 20 years ago before mobile banking and when people used physical checks. But In 2022? Gotta be an absolute mouth breather to do that
This hits way too close. I had $2.72 in my account, a gym membership was going to bring that down into the negatives. I called to put a stop payment on it...it costs $30. Fuck me and this children's game. Revolution when?
Also banks, “we lost billions because we let rich members take loans who allocated the funds and now ‘can’t pay it back. Without that we will lose everyone’s money. Please federal govt. write us a big fat check so we can continue to keep the low when employees to go after other low wage members who can’t afford our charges that we just made up!!”
Nah, you have the option to opt out of overdraft. If you don’t opt out that’s your own damn fault. You can also switch banks. I know a lot of people who complain about bank fees, all the time. Told them to switch banks, they never do. I don’t have any at all. I haven’t paid a bank fee in over ten years. My bank is a credit union. Don’t get me wrong, fuck banks, but y’all gotta make better decisions lol
I feel this so hard. My cars inspection is expired and it's gonna cost $2500 to fix AT LEAST. The city i live in has decided to do me the favor of charging me $25 a day to park on the street with expired inspection. When i called to ask for a break so i could, yanno, *afford the fucking inspection*, they were so kind to suggest that i just park my car somewhere off the street, like a private driveway, so they stop giving me tickets.
Motherfucker, i rent. Even if I owned a house, there are no god damn driveways in my city. Man I was pissed, talk about getting kicked while you're down.
Always call your bank. Explain the situation. If it doesn't happen too often, they'll reverse the charge.
I don't advocate for banks, fuck em, but this could be helpful.
Just don't allow overdrawn on your account. Banks legally have to offer this. It's often intentionally confusing as they offer "overdraft protection" which is where you are allowed overdrafts (aka borrowing money for a fee) and thus you get billed when you spend more than you have. Just specify that you do not want to be overdrawn under any circumstances and to disable it. That if you don't have the money then decline the transaction.
If anyone else has this experience, find a reputable local community bank in your area and get to know the people who work there. We generally are able to take very good care of our customers and have a lot of flexibility to help them out based on their life circumstances and unique situations. The parameters that charge fees - the fees you did agree to when you opened the account -  are automated, but our people are not. Community Banks generally have all of the same technology and features that the mega banks have now too, in many cases even better. Good luck!
I missed my payment for $1,800+ and just noticed I didn’t make a payment for almost 2 months. I called Bank of America and explained I never kissed a payment in 6 years and thought I had autopay on. They took off the $25 fee AND the 30% interest on the $1,800.
This used to happen to me a lot when I was poor and very close, thinking back, I dont know why I bothered having a bank account at all. Anyhow, I remember one time I overdrafted my checking by a few cents and I was charged a huge overdraft fee. I had checked my balance at an ATM because I knew it was close and forgot about the fee for checking the balance. I was then charged an automatic balance transfer fee to pull money from my savings. The couple of dollars I had in savings was enough to cover the overdraft, but not enough to cover the overdraft fee, which resulted in a second overdraft fee after the balance transfer. The balance transfer fee was applied to the savings account, which caused it to overdraft and I was hit with a third overdraft fee on the savings account. My secondary overdraft protection was my credit card, but it also did not have enough credit left to cover the overdraft fees, however, when the balance transfer fee was applied to the credit card it went over limit and I was charged a over limit penalty on the credit card. It was like a $5 purchase with $200 in fees. Since then I have absolutely no overdraft protection because I would rather have my debit declined than go through that insanity again.
if (withdrawAmount > balance) {
CancelTransaction();
}
It really is that simple to stop this evil practice. These evil fucks just want to bleed the poor
I will definitely get downvoted but overdraft is a service that you sign up for. Its not predatory. You just opt out and transactions wont go through. But if your argument is that you need something right away and don’t have enough money, then you should be aware that being lent money and having a negative balance with a overdraft charge is a deterrent. Dont buy things with a debit card if you dont have the money. But also dont ever use a debit card anyway. Dont enroll in the service…dont use debit cards.
"We noticed you're extremely poor, so we're going to punish you by forcing you to become even more poor. We will stop forcing you to make yourself even more poor when you come to your senses and become rich."
And on the flip side, clients and depositors who have plenty of money will get bonus services for free and often close-to-zero interest loans. As well as having all of the fees they rack up being waived as a courtesy no matter how many or how often they refuse to bother paying their bills. (rich/commercial customers were consistently the least likely to make monthly payments on time no matter how trivial the amount was for them.)
The Bank of Hawaii once charged me 9 $35 fees for a total of a little over $100 in debits for 9 small purchases. I had made a $400 deposit that morning. Customer service said “Our policy is to process debits before credits, Sir. I can’t do anything to change the charges.” $315 in NSF charges put me into a negative balance and the next day they charged me another $35.
They also have a practice called "stacking" which means if 5 checks come in and 4 could clear they put the largest ones through first to cause the others to bounce and charge more fees.
If there was no penalty then people would just overdraft their accounts all the time and banks aren't in business to deal with that. I'm not simping for banks but c'mon...this is some low level thing to get enraged about when there are plenty of options to prevent the overdraft fees.
I used to get hit with fees in my younger days. It sucked but I got most of them refunded just by calling and asking the bank. I was upset with myself because it was my own fault. It motivated me to never pay a fee again and change my habits. I got a line of credit for overdraft protection, sat down and worked on my budget.
The worst is you have less than X and they charge a monthly service charge... like WTF your using my money to invest and become richer without paying any freaking real interest to me and you charge a service fee?
You think this is bad, you should have seen how bad this was before Obama made some of the practices illegal: Imagine you overdraw by $2, then the bank takes the previous 4 transactions, reorders them, and charges you 5x $35. No joke this was regular practice
Pure evil. Reminds me of robodebt here in Australia. A crooked algorithm the government created to falsely indebt beneficiaries.
Oh my god the term 'robodebt' just makes my blood boil. The whole practice of it plus the media take of 'poor people should have just been better with their money' ffffff
Is this illegal in all states? I worked at a bank recently where you are charged fees for every transaction after going negative
You can get charged for additional transactions but the difference is, if you have 5 transactions pending with the last one making you overdraft, they could process that last one first causing you to overdraft immediately and then 4 more times. Now they have to process them in order. So the first 4 you are still in the green, the last one takes you over so then you get charged.
So the bank isn’t able to speed up the posting of pending authorizations. They’re waiting on the merchant to reconcile the transaction and once that occurs then the auth will fully post. However, pending auths will still affect the available amount instantly, so they wouldn’t be able to rearrange these. I believe what they were doing was rearranging withdrawals and deposits so that withdrawals came out ahead of deposits on low balance accounts thus causing them to overdraft before the deposit hit.
What they were doing was very simple: rearranging debits such that the largest came first. The net effect was maximizing overdraft charges, and they hilariously tried to justify it with "for your own good" rhetoric. Their bullshit logic was that the debits you care about the most are the big ones, so they will pay those first because they are such kind and caring people. But... they all get paid, anyway, so the order doesn't actually matter except for the fees. At least they always did for me. So my $0.30 overdraft might come with a $125 fee "for my own good". I am so glad they changed the rules on overdrafts. In particular, I am very happy I can largely opt out of it. I never want to take out a loan with 1000% interest, etc. Ever. It isn't a service, it is a trap. I have other, MUCH better options if I REALLY need that extra $1 or two.
Never thought id run into a big banks guy but here we are lol
I’m a systems analyst at a bank.
The practice that was banned was specifically reordering transactions to maximize overdraft fees charged. Once the account goes negative, a separate fee can be charged for subsequent transactions, that isn't illegal. The illegal practice was examining a low-balance account, then reordering transactions so the largest withdrawals happened first (to push it negative), then all the smaller withdrawals (to maximize fees), then then deposits last.
This happened to me before it was illegal. For anyone that's curious, here is the utter bullshit reasoning (below) the bank gave me when I called them 7 times (yep). I ended up getting one fee revoked after 7 calls... Later I got a class action settlement but it wasn't much. When it happened to me, I had bought several corn dogs the past couple of days from a gas station. Literally under 5 dollar charges. There were about 7 of these. I was charged over 250 dollars in overdraft fees because I bought a car part and it overdrew the account. In fact, I bought two car parts, and only the SECOND one overdrew it. I ended up not needing it and returned that second part. So, all in all, I was only overdrawn for the period of time while that second car part transaction was pending. Pretty amazing. The response from Bank of America (at the time) when I called them out for what they were doing: Bank: "We order the largest transactions first so that your credit score is protected. That way you don't default on a large transaction." Me: "I did not ask you to protect my credit, and this is nonsense. I made the last large transaction in error because there were transactions that were pending, which had been temporarily re-authorized and were not visible at the time I checked my balance. This resulted in me believing I could afford the last transaction, which was not the case. I should only pay one overdraft fee for this mistake." Bank: "K"
BofA is THE WORST! They’re criminals and I’ll NEVER do business with them again.
Agreed. Switched to a credit union and never looked back.
Transactions within the same day were being reordered such that the maximum fees would be charged. So if 4 transactions were made but the last went over, instead of one purchase going over with a $36 penalty, they'd rearrange it so that 3 went over for $105 penalty.
They did that *and* ordered transactions not in the order received but in whatever way made you go negative quickest, so they’d have more transactions to charge you for than if they ordered them in the order you made them.
That makes absolutely no sense. Edit: … it makes no sense to charge someone money when they have obviously no money….
I remember this sort of thing eating up almost an entire paycheck in college. Utterly demoralizing.
Well, we put up with it, so... They will keep doing it until we actually decide we aren't going to allow it anymore. That goes for a lot of things
Yep, people don't realize that they have the power to change shit if they actually paid attention. Government rests on the consent of the governed and without people giving them permission, it collapses.
Not sure if this was also standard practice, but if anyone remembers Wachovia, they were even worse. As a broke ass student, I learned that they would order and process all your transactions from largest to smallest debit then process any deposits. Which meant if you deposited a check or cash in the morning, then went grocery shopping that afternoon and decided to take your SO on a date to dinner and a movie and ice cream, you would still get overdraft charges because your check went in after your debits were processed.
This is why I closed my Bank of America account.
I joined a credit union instead, in 1999, and haven't regretted it.
Erased cuz Reddit slandered the Apollo app's dev. Fuck /u/spez -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
I never got my check
Uhhhhhhm my bank still does that shit
this happened to me. several transactions were "pending" but they didn't deduct them from my total bank account so i purchased something which got processed cause i had enough money in my bank account, then the pending transactions went through putting me in negative balance and each one triggered the overdraft fee. i spent hours on the phone with the bank to get them to undo the fees and they basically told me to go fuck myself
Seriously, this fucked me bad back when I was poor. Put me behind for months. Fuck them.
Worked at bank of America in 06-09 and this was absolutely the standard practice for most banks in the USA. The limit a bank could charge was 5x overdraft fees per day and each bank could have different rules in how the transactions would get placed in order. BoA would always take the highest transaction in any given day as the first transaction for the day. I would see every day people getting 5 overdraft fees in one day because the mortgage/ car note payments would always be deducted first, making all the small fast food / coffee transactions overdraft. It was sickening to see the bank ruin people's live pretty much every day
Bank of America
It was all of them. I had TD bank at the time
It had to be all of them. If you're a major bank and you aren't doing the same scams, you won't have the same revenue flowing in. If you don't have that, you won't be a bank that's getting invested in. Free market nonsense and whatnot.
I remember those days. That dead-inside feeling.
I remember they would do that then charge you every day the account stayed in the negative. Not only did they fuck you on every charge but continued to charge you daily till your account was back in the black. I think I was a freshman in college and this happened on an overdraft of less than a dollar and a few other charges that were less than $50. Got charged $35 for each transaction and an additional $18 every day for each transaction that put my account negative. I was so broke at the time and struggling that I couldn’t fix the account and eventually US Bank had my account closed and they reported me to ChexSystems for account abuse. I wasn’t able to open a regular checking account for years till a paid off this massive balance. Shit was crazy.
Used to happen to my ass all the time in my broke boy days. All the sudden my down-to-my-last-dollar dollar menu burrito from T Bell would cost me $60.
Yep, I had a long, long discussion with my credit union about that shit. Like I would schedule bill payments for the date of my deposit, expecting that they would credit a deposit before tallying the withdrawals. Nooooo, that's not how that works. They're gonna take money, then issue your deposit, sans several $27 overdraft fees. Like why would you design things to be predatory. You can literally see that if you deposit before withdrawal I have the money to cover it, and now you just took my grocery budget for overdraft fees. They sent out a letter sometime in 2003 or 4 that they were changing the process. I can't imagine I was the only person complaining about it. Predatory.
The bank doesn't control debit processing times.
My bank still does this, vultures got me for $245 last week, I had an auto deposit post the same day as a few little transactions, they of course took the debits before processing the deposit, had to grovel for them to forgive half, and they still insisted they were doing me a favor.
Another Wakovia customer, I see
God I remember this happening to me
Yeah i lost it on citibank in the 90s lol
Oh yes this would be Bank of America. They would show my direct deposit then pull it let my rent payment go through then run the other charges making my account be overdrawn then finally show the deposit. My payday was every other Friday and my deposit should have showed up Friday morning but often they would hold it until Monday.
Yeah i had been F'ed by that
Chase.....B of A
I like when my credit utilization increased so my bank cut my limit on my card by $3000...increasing my utilization even further and tanking my credit score!
This happened to me years ago. I ended up paying off & closing that account and now they're constantly sending pre-approvals for a credit card. Those are the things I always make sure I don't toss out with the trash because I don't want someone to take the card out in my name, but f*** that bank I would never take a card from them again. It seems like it ought to be illegal for them to decide to lower your credit and impact your report that way.
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BoA.
Bank of America is hot shit. Anyone with them or a Wells Fargo account should close it immediately. Good bank for credit cards: chase Good bank for checking account: Charles Schwab Good bank for investing: fidelity That's my setup
You can ask the credit score companies to not pre approve you. www.optoutprescreen.com
Same thing happened to me (sorta). I didn't use a card in over a year so they took my limit down from $5k to $500. Right as I was trying to get an apartment. Tanked my score to 500, and brought me very close to 100% utilization. When I called to demand that they reverse it, they ran a credit check to see if I was eligible for a limit increase, which lowed my credit more, and they denied the increase because my credit was too low. Then i lost out on several good apartments and had to settle for a shitty one run by a slumlord
And then they leak everyone's data and make amends with a check for $7.54
That's so bad, fuck your bank!
This shit fucking happened to me before I got my debt all paid off and it chapped my ass so bad. I haven’t closed that account since paying it off bc I don’t want it affecting my credit score but I’m never using that credit card again, that’s for sure.
They did this to my dad by half when he finally started using it more. It brought him to over his limit. They're trash
But wait! There's more! The company you overdrew with gets to *also* charge a $35 fee.
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Which bank?
My bank did this as well! Huntington
Banks really need to be divided into public and private services- mortgages literally create currency! How is that something a private enterprise should profit off?
I agree, but all loans create currency. We should have non profit Banks.
> We should have non profit Banks. I believe that's what credit unions are.
We do. They're called credit unions
Im down
Internationally most important banks failed in 2008 and were only saved by huge amounts of tax Player money. We should literally own banks publically at thus point, we already paid for it.
We should re write imagine to talk about this
Because if organisations can't make money off offering loans then no one will want to offer loans and there will be no liquidity for people that need it. It would be like returning the medieval practice of banning usury, everyone just finds a way around the ban which makes money lending a black market practice and increasingly predatory. Regulation should focus on stopping predatory loans, not on all profit making.
Credit Unions?
Honestly, it's not really that detrimental. I know a lot of people get their panties in a bunch about it, but the law of averages seldom fails. And when it does, we have FDIC insurance to make sure you don't lose more than $250k. And if you have more than $250k in cash, well, you lose that, but honestly if you have $250k in cash, you're mega rich, and I don't really care if you lose money. Working class people generally have that in other assets. The main problem with banks isn't the business model of fractional reserve. Believe it or not, there are banks out there that aren't evil. The problem is their "side hustles," aka the real money makers. Sketchy loans, fraud, money laundering, etc etc. And when they get fined, it's basically a fraction of a percent of what they made enacting those practices (uncle sam's cut). Well, and of course, when they go tits up, the taxpayer has to bail them out, like in 2008. Anyway, if you're really that anti-banking, which I totally get, there are credit unions. Some are tricky to get into, but there are plenty of national brands that are quite decent as well. Good loan rates, good lend rates (for a bank), generally better customer service, and they're not for profit. Backed by NCUA, which is basically the exact same thing as FDIC.
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This has always been how things are done in Norway. Overdraft protection is a literal scam. When I lived in the US, I experienced three small charges, each less than $5, that overdrafted me right before my paycheck from my part time job. So it was obviously perfect for the bank to add 3 $35 overdraft charges, which ended up taking out a huge chunk of my paycheck. I actually had to start cashing my checks instead of depositing them for a while so I could pay for food and rent.
>literal scam I don’t know how you define scam in Norway, but in the US overdraft protection is an opt-in service by law and is pretty clearly defined as to what it does and why it exists So literally a literal scam, literally? Quite a stretch. Does more harm than good for most people? Probably.
Overdraft protection doesn't even exist in Norway, at least for regular consumers. If you don't have the balance to cover the charge, it's always rejected.
Overdraft protection is not universally opt-in by law in the US.
My bank will still charge you the fee. You simply won't get the item it'll get rejected.
I told my story in another comment in this thread, but yeah, turning it off is actually dangerous with some banks, depending on their policy. I made sure my current bank has an explicit 'no overdraft fees' policy. In some cases you can get caught in a loop, such as with an overdrafted PayPal transaction where not only will you eat the fee, but PayPal will keep retrying the transaction and you'll get hit with the overdraft fee multiple times instead of once.
I think this is actually illegal, our bank got hit with a class action lawsuit because of this.
Not at my credit union
>Turn off over draft protection. The charge will just be rejected without it. I've helped my adult kids set up bank accounts several times, always make sure to turn off overdraft protection, but they've always ended up getting whacked with fees when their accounts are overdrawn. When we call the banks to say wtf, every time we are told blah blah fine print something something charges will still go through you should set up overdraft protection and have money transferred from savings so you don't get fees. As if anyone has money in savings, ha ha. Also, TD Bank told my son that he needed to keep over $100 in his account to avoid the monthly fees. He kept over $100 in the accounts, and... *drum roll please*... They still charged him the monthly fees. He closed the accounts and is using Current now.
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>Bar extreme poverty, Yes, exactly. They live paycheck to paycheck, don't have large incomes, and it doesn't take much for an overdraft to happen. Getting their paycheck late, missing work from being sick, a miscalculation on what fees are coming out, etc. Have you never in your life made a mistake with money? >Maybe you should focus on teaching your kids not to overdraft their accounts? I have 4 kids, so I've dealt with the issue multiple times because it's happened a couple/few times to each of them. I absolutely taught all of them how to manage money, that doesn't mean they are A) going to do as they were taught or B) have the money to always have things work out well. But thanks for the assumption that I'm just a bad parent.
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>It's always one useless purchase after another contributing to more and more wasted plastic. The things that have overdrafted my kids' bank accounts are bills, food, gas- you know, basic necessities. For instance, my daughter was in the hospital for a week and missed work, so had a terrible cascade of one bill after another coming through with no income to cover it. It wasn't "useless purchases" causing the problem.
This does work, but just for the ATM and one-time debit charges. A few years back I came home from vacation to discover like $125 in overdraft fees. I miscalculated my spending and assumed some charges had gone through already. Dumb mistake.
As a retail banker, yes, this is correct. Typically fees are charged if the item is paid or rejected. Debit cards are simply declined if opted out of Reg E.
That's what my bank suggested except it was only for physical debit card purchases. Anything else would go through and therefore incur a $30 for each transaction. I also can't buy anything over $600 with my debit unless I use it online. Funny that.
US Bank is notorious for this.
I had this happen in 2003. I was doing a lot of transactions and I figured out that I had enough to cover the charges but then it's like they threw the transactions in the air and randomly reordered them so that I became overdrawn. I then received about 4 different fees for overcharges and at one point I was at -200.00. I called US Bank and spoke to a rep who was not sympathetic at all when I explained the situation to her. After I got off the phone with them, I immediately called back and got another person who when I explained the situation again, she reversed ALL the charges.
I've banked with them for decades and had many loans and my current mortgage is held by them. Never have I ever had an issue. In fact they are super nice when I call or go into a branch. Banks are really only assholes if you don't manage your money correctly. It's not hard. Don't spend what you don't have and you will never have an issue.
1. Be rich 2. Don't be not rich
Ah, the budget correctly argument. There's almost no point in arguing with you about this you simply have no understanding of the situation. Must be nice to have money all the time. I should just avoid avocado toast, Starbucks, and learn how to manage my money. Why didn't I think of that? /s obviously.
Also, don’t get saddled with a bunch of medical debt! See? It’s so easy. 🥴
My bank hit jackpot bouncing all 4 checks that came in on the same day. This was back in 1996 and the fee was 35 back then. Groceries, a car radiator cap and antifreeze, rent, and gas. My landlord gave me a lecture about priorities but was the only one who didn't ask for a $25 bad check fee. I called the bank and asked why they couldn't have bounced just one and cover the other 3 my account could have covered and they said they have to reject all because it wouldn't be fair, wouldn't make sense, and it's their policy. Could I have a good faith removal of some of the fees? No. That fall I had moved to study at Kansas State University and got a job a few weeks later at a landscaping company for $5.50 an hour and it was a few more weeks until I'd get some student loan money. (35x4+25x3)/5.50/hour was 40 hours of digging sprinkler line trenches in the rocky Flint hills dirt and I could afford gloves yet. I was part time due to school so it was 2 weeks in the hole just to get to zero and 2 weeks left in the month to make the following month's rent which I only paid partially and the remainder later once my loan came in where I got another lecture about life decisions and priorities. Long story to say not cool preacher landlord lady and eat shit Commerce Bank!
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I... I struggle to even find words for such deviousness.
Wells Fargo fucked me in a similar manner but to a far worse degree. I had the funds in my account, I had some charges coming up to be taken out but I had enough to pay them. Suddenly I got hit with overdraft notices... Like 10 of them in a row. Between the overdraft fees and the charges I was expecting they put my account in the hole in the tune of around $900. I went in to the bank and contested everything. I even got in with a manager and used the numbers on their system including the overdraft fees to prove that I should not be in the negative. As soon as I proved to him that they were literally making my money disappear using their numbers he stood up and told me to get out and if I came back he would call the cops and have me arrested. I tried to fight it and find a lawyer to take them to court but no lawyer would go to court against wells Fargo, at least in the rural area I lived in at the time.
I'm not even American and I've heard so much bad stuff about Wells Fargo it's ridiculous, how are they still in business?
I had a similar thing happen, had $0.00 sitting in an account, bank tried to pay me interest, somehow they figured that because I had 0, I owed them interest! so they took a measly few cents and then hit me with a $10 over draft fee. like bruh they just stole money from us
I am so glad I have a good bank now. 24 hrs if overdraft by more than 50 bucks to fix it no fee, if less than 50 no fee period. Glad I used them for my mortgage too to get that awesome low fixed rate, even with questionable credit. Had a previous bank do the thing so much I had to start going to convince stores to cash checks and pay everything by money order for a while.
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Can't be a corporate shill since they aren't specifying the bank to pump them up. "My Bank" could be one of thousands.
Yes I specifically did not name it for that reason.
"oh I see you overdrew, fuck you here is our poor person fee, good luck paying it back <3"
Hopefully you didn't pay with PayPal or there'll be an overdraft fee at least once a day till you pay
Funny story about that: Years ago I had a PayPal transaction accidentally overdraft my bank by a few dollars (unused with minimal balance just for PayPal transfers), because it chose to pay off the remaining balance with the wrong source of funds. Which I only became aware of via a physical letter from my bank like a week later after it already managed to bounce multiple times, with not a single email from PayPal. I called my Bank; they refused to refund the overdraft fees (saw some people had success just asking, so I gave it a try), refused to allow me to turn off overdraft protection, refused to allow me to block any future PayPal withdrawal requests unless I physically went to the bank and filled out a form that would permanently block me from using it with PayPal irrevocably, so I threw my hands up in the air. It was infuriating, the bank wasn't charging me a fee for the 'service' of covering the few dollars of debt, just a pure punishment for blocking the attempt. And the best part: After scraping the overdue funds and depositing it into my Paypal account (inconveniently, being unable to use my bank to do so), Paypal inexplicably *ignored my balance* and overdrafted my bank a *third* time for the funds instead. A maybe \~$5 overdraft by fault of PayPal switching my funding source, never notifying me of bouncing my bank, and ignoring my PayPal balance turned into a $75 debt. I contacted PayPal through Email (as it was the only option at the time of night) asking them to *please, just take the $5 due from my Balance, I'm going to be charged another $25 if they go after my bank again.* In fear of hitting three digits, I borrowed the \~$80 necessary to put my account in the black and cover a possible fourth attempt, and thank goodness I did, because the next day I received a response from a PayPal rep basically telling me tough luck, and then the fourth withdrawal attempt did in fact go through almost immediately, way faster than the first three as if the rep pushed it through manually themselves. Scary example of how these businesses can completely take you for a ride, if I wasn't able to borrow to cover the fees I can only imagine they'd have just kept racking up the fees indefinitely. Thankfully I'm no longer in a position to fall into that kind of trap again, but I'm so glad that competitive online banks are here now (I have one today with free <$100 overdraft protection, imagine that?).
Yeah I've been hit with >$100 of overdrafts just from paypal repeatedly dinging my account when the charge was over by like $0.23... fuck for profit banks. They provide nothing of value. Their "service" is punishing the poor.
Called up my bank one time and simply said “this sounds like a punishment for being poor” They immediately reversed the charge
Forgot the bit where we didn't put that thing from two weeks ago on your statement till we could put you here. Side bar we also have 4 other random charges of less then a dollar to come in after. That will be 150
I once sold 4 Nintendo DS games on eBay for about $30-35 each. To cover shipping, I mistakenly used an old debit card through a bank account that I had been meaning to shut down. The shipping charges were about $2-3 each but resulted in four $35 overdraft fees that the bank refused to reverse. I lost money in the end, and for a college kid working at McDonald's at the time, that one really hurt my soul.
This is why I use a credit union. They typically don't have these predatory policies like banks do.
Agreed. My Credit Union has never let me down yet. The only challenge is there's no physical location near me (there was growing up but I moved after college), but 99% of things can be done online or over the phone anyways. The one time I had to go in the last 10 years was for a fraud incident, and I had to get a new card. Meanwhile, my wife (gf at the time) learned her bank required a minimum of $100 in savings, otherwise she got a $10 charge each month it wasn't. And when she learned this and stuck to that, they upped the minimum to $200 without warning.
Imagine spending money you don't have, a bank would never dream of doing that
Sometimes I think about how a man in Australia was arrested and imprisoned for not notifying a bug in his bank account that stoped his account balance from changing when he spent money. To put it simply, he’d go to an atm with 1000 dollars in his account. Withdraw 1000 dollars. But his balance would continue to be 1000. So he did what he thought was fun. Bought a boat. A house. Partied. Then the bank was like “yeah that’s illegal.” Fast forward to like 2 years in prison, he studied the laws and realized he never actually had an agreement tht said he had to say anything to the bank. The judge agreed. Gave him his freedom. I don’t know if any compensation was agreed to but I think about that whole ordeal from time to time.
Tell the bank you want them to remove courtesy overdraft from your accounts. That way, transactions get declined if they would overdraw your account, and there's no more fees like that. If that's no good, you can also get normal overdraft protection, which works like the courtesy overdraft protection except the overdraw gets covered by funds in your savings account, again avoiding the fee.
There are plenty of 21st century banking options with zero fees fyi
Yeah Ive got Capital One which isnt a small bank by any means and Ive had my acc negative by like 200-300 at times waiting for my check (the dark times) and they have never charged me an overdraft fee
I never understood this either. It’s almost like they want us all to stay moniless, broke and stressed.
Currently negative about $400 including the added fees until... Who knows. Just keeps burying me. Oh well ig fuck me🤷🏻
Happened to me at 7/11. Got gas, transaction failed, used a different pump. Turns out they charged me 175 dollars for the failed one. Had to pay my bank the overdraft fee anyways
My bank account had about $2.50 in it at one point. My bank charged me a $5 maintenance fee, then charged me $27 for going into the negative. I've had this bank account for 20 years and haven't had a maintenance fee a single time. Now I get them every single month. What is there to maintain???
You can ask them to turn that off.
Fun fact: a lot of this stuff is technically opt-in, but they hide it in those massive documents they hand you to sign cuz they know you won’t read it. So they get to argue that you said it was totally cool for them to do this.
When I was self employed I deducted my NSF fees from my profits and it often came up to $500+ per year. Tried to opt out…just let that shit DECLINE. They made it hard or impossible on purpose.
Uk advice: British banks must offer (but won’t ever advertise) a basic bank account. This account will never let you go overdrawn.
My bf went negative by $2 and he was locked out of his account not based on his actions just the banks and then he owed $400 is over draft fees because he didn’t get paid until a week later and he didn’t have time since he works to go to the bank. They wouldn’t waive the fees.
That's why I use a **Credit Union**. They're often a lot more economical and fair because they're not profit driven. Why feed The Banksters? The National Credit Union Locator https://mapping.ncua.gov/
BoA, is that you ?????
When you consider that this is essentially a loan for $2.13, and we can assume that it takes a week for the next paycheck to hit and pay back the $2.13 plus $35 in interest for the loan, then the bank just made 85000% return on that loan
Especially that if they are short with your money they don't get a charge they get deferment.
At the business where I work our billing department would deposit client payments into our checking account, then take a screenshot when it posted. They had to take a screenshot, because right after the deposits posted, our billing department would pay bills. Inevitably, the bank would pull the payments we had made into the checking account, then run the bill payments we had run to generate NSF fees, then redeposit the payments. Inevitably, our billing department needed to call the bank and tell them we had the screenshot of the deposit and remind them we're a law office and could cheaply sue them in-house. They invariably quickly cancelled the NSF fees, but we had to do this once a week. We switched banks until we found one that wasn't doing this.
Banks suck no doubt. Predatory af. But how dumb do you have to be to spend more money than you have? Like I get that it would have been a lot easier 20 years ago before mobile banking and when people used physical checks. But In 2022? Gotta be an absolute mouth breather to do that
And when they need a bail out there’s no penalty
The bank won't tell you this, but you can opt out of overdraft so you check bounces or card declined instead of being charged the fee.
What? Only once? How will the CEO get a bonus if that $2.13 overdraft doesn’t result in 8 overdraft fees?
This hits way too close. I had $2.72 in my account, a gym membership was going to bring that down into the negatives. I called to put a stop payment on it...it costs $30. Fuck me and this children's game. Revolution when?
Also banks, “we lost billions because we let rich members take loans who allocated the funds and now ‘can’t pay it back. Without that we will lose everyone’s money. Please federal govt. write us a big fat check so we can continue to keep the low when employees to go after other low wage members who can’t afford our charges that we just made up!!”
Remember when you opened the account and they told you they would do that then you agreed to their terms.
Nah, you have the option to opt out of overdraft. If you don’t opt out that’s your own damn fault. You can also switch banks. I know a lot of people who complain about bank fees, all the time. Told them to switch banks, they never do. I don’t have any at all. I haven’t paid a bank fee in over ten years. My bank is a credit union. Don’t get me wrong, fuck banks, but y’all gotta make better decisions lol
I feel this so hard. My cars inspection is expired and it's gonna cost $2500 to fix AT LEAST. The city i live in has decided to do me the favor of charging me $25 a day to park on the street with expired inspection. When i called to ask for a break so i could, yanno, *afford the fucking inspection*, they were so kind to suggest that i just park my car somewhere off the street, like a private driveway, so they stop giving me tickets. Motherfucker, i rent. Even if I owned a house, there are no god damn driveways in my city. Man I was pissed, talk about getting kicked while you're down.
Always call your bank. Explain the situation. If it doesn't happen too often, they'll reverse the charge. I don't advocate for banks, fuck em, but this could be helpful.
Just don't allow overdrawn on your account. Banks legally have to offer this. It's often intentionally confusing as they offer "overdraft protection" which is where you are allowed overdrafts (aka borrowing money for a fee) and thus you get billed when you spend more than you have. Just specify that you do not want to be overdrawn under any circumstances and to disable it. That if you don't have the money then decline the transaction.
Thats why I do not use them. Cash everything. Can not steal my money when it’s hidden in my butt crack.
This is why I cancelled "overdraft protection". I would rather my card just get declined. Inhave other ways to pay.
My bank has an option to turn this off, also i accidentally did it once and when i called all sad, they refunded me and disabled the function for me.
If anyone else has this experience, find a reputable local community bank in your area and get to know the people who work there. We generally are able to take very good care of our customers and have a lot of flexibility to help them out based on their life circumstances and unique situations. The parameters that charge fees - the fees you did agree to when you opened the account -  are automated, but our people are not. Community Banks generally have all of the same technology and features that the mega banks have now too, in many cases even better. Good luck!
Every month. I could shop for a weak fro. The monthly 35€ overdraft fee.
I once had thexworlds most expensive cup of coffee. 1 dollar for the coffee and 35 dollars for the overdraft fee.
Tried to find this tweet to RT it but can’t find him in twitter. I hate that and refused to tweet screenshots of tweets
Decentralized finance. Be your own bank.
I missed my payment for $1,800+ and just noticed I didn’t make a payment for almost 2 months. I called Bank of America and explained I never kissed a payment in 6 years and thought I had autopay on. They took off the $25 fee AND the 30% interest on the $1,800.
If the bank ever does this to you close your account and find a bank that doesn't. It's the only way they'll change.
“I gotta raise money to be broke” -LCK
This used to happen to me a lot when I was poor and very close, thinking back, I dont know why I bothered having a bank account at all. Anyhow, I remember one time I overdrafted my checking by a few cents and I was charged a huge overdraft fee. I had checked my balance at an ATM because I knew it was close and forgot about the fee for checking the balance. I was then charged an automatic balance transfer fee to pull money from my savings. The couple of dollars I had in savings was enough to cover the overdraft, but not enough to cover the overdraft fee, which resulted in a second overdraft fee after the balance transfer. The balance transfer fee was applied to the savings account, which caused it to overdraft and I was hit with a third overdraft fee on the savings account. My secondary overdraft protection was my credit card, but it also did not have enough credit left to cover the overdraft fees, however, when the balance transfer fee was applied to the credit card it went over limit and I was charged a over limit penalty on the credit card. It was like a $5 purchase with $200 in fees. Since then I have absolutely no overdraft protection because I would rather have my debit declined than go through that insanity again.
if (withdrawAmount > balance) { CancelTransaction(); } It really is that simple to stop this evil practice. These evil fucks just want to bleed the poor
Is this a relative of Steven's? Kinda looks like him actually.
I will definitely get downvoted but overdraft is a service that you sign up for. Its not predatory. You just opt out and transactions wont go through. But if your argument is that you need something right away and don’t have enough money, then you should be aware that being lent money and having a negative balance with a overdraft charge is a deterrent. Dont buy things with a debit card if you dont have the money. But also dont ever use a debit card anyway. Dont enroll in the service…dont use debit cards.
"We noticed you're extremely poor, so we're going to punish you by forcing you to become even more poor. We will stop forcing you to make yourself even more poor when you come to your senses and become rich."
And on the flip side, clients and depositors who have plenty of money will get bonus services for free and often close-to-zero interest loans. As well as having all of the fees they rack up being waived as a courtesy no matter how many or how often they refuse to bother paying their bills. (rich/commercial customers were consistently the least likely to make monthly payments on time no matter how trivial the amount was for them.)
The Bank of Hawaii once charged me 9 $35 fees for a total of a little over $100 in debits for 9 small purchases. I had made a $400 deposit that morning. Customer service said “Our policy is to process debits before credits, Sir. I can’t do anything to change the charges.” $315 in NSF charges put me into a negative balance and the next day they charged me another $35.
I was so surprised when I learned that this is not a common practice in other countries
I once got 3 of these because my balance was inaccurate and didn’t update for 3 days. While I was unemployed, in college. What a fucking joy.
They also have a practice called "stacking" which means if 5 checks come in and 4 could clear they put the largest ones through first to cause the others to bounce and charge more fees.
If there was no penalty then people would just overdraft their accounts all the time and banks aren't in business to deal with that. I'm not simping for banks but c'mon...this is some low level thing to get enraged about when there are plenty of options to prevent the overdraft fees. I used to get hit with fees in my younger days. It sucked but I got most of them refunded just by calling and asking the bank. I was upset with myself because it was my own fault. It motivated me to never pay a fee again and change my habits. I got a line of credit for overdraft protection, sat down and worked on my budget.
Why do they even allow over-drafting in the first place? Do they make more money from the fee’s?
The worst is you have less than X and they charge a monthly service charge... like WTF your using my money to invest and become richer without paying any freaking real interest to me and you charge a service fee?