Darling Fascist Bully Boy…
I’ve wondered about this too. It makes sense to charge a fee to the issuer of an NSF cheque, if you are in the “let’s punish them” mindset, but why charge a fee to the recipient? Are you trying to punish the recipient for knowing some lowlife* who passes NSF cheques?
I think this is a case of “we do this because we can”.
[sub]*I’ve been one of these lowlifes.[/sub]
USAA has been telling me there is a Japanese law stating that US banks cannot initiate new credit with people living on Japanese soil, even if they are US military living on a military base (we don’t live on a base, but we are military). I can’t find anything to back this up. You probably don’t know this off the top of your head, but can you explain? I don’t get it.
I couldn’t quote hard percentages even if I had them, but the answer to how much of an overdraft fee is profit ranges from “not much” to “most of it”, depending on whom you ask. The weaselly method would be to include the costs involved in check processing as a whole – processing center equipment, man-hours for data entry, etc., none of which is recouped on checks that don’t bounce – into the equation, in which case only about a fifth to a sixth of each fee goes straight into the bank’s coffers. Accounting only for the amount of the fee versus the cost of processing that one specific check, that number increases to encompass the majority of the fee.
So, in other words, yeah, the bank makes money when it charges you overdraft fees. Shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise.
I’m sorry, I can’t answer this one definitively…but I can tell you the following.
- IANAL, but I don’t see how, barring some kind of separate trade agreement, Japanese law would affect the way American banks on U.S. soil conduct business with U.S. citizen clients.
- If such a law does exist, I’ve never heard of it.
- Neither has our sales department, who handle credit line applications.
- Neither have their managers.
- Neither has our underwriting department.
- Neither has Legal (though they advised me against taking the application while they researched it; I’m sure they’ll get back to me with all due speed)
- Neither have the Sales and Account Management divisions of four other leading credit card issuers that I called today, pretending to be in this situation.
Now, there are certain countries for residents of which my employer will not open accounts of any kind, but that’s purely a matter of bank policy; it’s a risk analysis based on multiple incidences of fraud. Japan is not one of those countries, and I would think this would be true for other banks as well.
So, I don’t know for certain why USAA won’t take your application. Beyond that, the best I can give you is a brazen and completely unsupported WAG. To boot: Japanese authorities, notorious for strict trade regulations, may have stated a strong preference that U.S. banks stay within certain boundaries regarding people living on Japanese soil. USAA, not wanting to piss off these authorities and lose license to do what limited Japanese business they already can, elects not to open new credit lines for anyone living on Japanese soil, U.S. citizen or otherwise. This policy is then communicated to the sales and service force with a strong implication that the restriction is due to a “trade agreement”. The representatives to whom you spoke then quoted this policy to you, but phrased it as a matter of law. I base this guess on similarly ambiguous internal communications my company has sent out regarding why we don’t open accounts for residents of certain countries.
Or, hell, maybe there is such a law, but hardly anyone (save USAA) abides by or is even aware of it. That wouldn’t surprise me either.