Imagine seeing the following on your bank statement online:
40 dollars withdrawl [whatever atm place listed here]
33 dollar overdraft charge (why did you allow me to withdraw if I didn’t have the money)
2 dollar atm fee
33 dollar overdraft charge (you are seeing these are two seperate charges so you give overdraft to BOTH!!!, holy %#%)
I today realized that I received an overdraft notice, I had shrugged off the kind of envelope the overdraft notice was in (tear off thingys) because I’ve received a lot of advertisements from Wells Fargo in EXACTLY, EXACTLY the same fucking kind of envelopes.
These things I would open thinking, oh fuck I screwed up and they’d say something like: Refinance your home mortgage with us. The fact that they allowed me to make an atm withdrawl in order to charge 66 bucks is just unbelievable. I’ve never had an overdraft before, probably lucky for them cause I’d have changed banks. Its a royal pain in the ass to change banks when you have direct deposit or direct bill pay (I have direct bill pay cause I hate writing checks). I’m going to have to put those things on my discover instead so I need a to change banks I don’t get screwed running around.
I’ve been below 0 for three weeks, and I didn’t notice anything until yesterday when they finally denied an atm charge (thank god in retrospect, 66 bucks is harsh.)
Now my deposit that will cover more than the negative by quite an amount WILL NOT BE USED TO PREVENT MORE OVERDRAFT CHARGES, instead until the 31st, my automated bill pay will either get rejected (which is the proper way to do it I think) or get charged 33 dollars. I was really stupid to get my balance low like that, but now I have a hell of a lot more pity for poorer people and understand why a lot don’t have bank accounts.
So now my account sits in limbo with 2000 dollars not being credited to me, instead they get interest on that money and possibly get to screw me some more with more 33 dollar charges. My negative balance amount is 60 % the very charges compaining about the negative balance. But to be positive they’ve sent me a very strong message to move on and get a credit union account (my campus has a CU on campus.) I think what caused the negative balance was normally I have a large cushion to not even worry about it, but I made a large payment on my discover to get back to paying every month.
On top of that, this morning I just finished reading the new book about Enron’s collapse and everything leading up to it. Not exactly feeling happy about the finance industry right now. And I used to be a big proponent of self-regulation. (Several times I checked myself to make sure I wasn’t reading a piece of fiction while reading about enron and Fastow especially.)
Oh, and I definitely second the credit union idea. You’ll still get charged for overdrafts, if you don’t keep your checkbook balanced, but the fees are generally less and the other services are usually better. I have a checking account with the CU at my work. I don’t keep a high balance in it or anything, and, among other things, it entitles me to use my ATM card at machines owned by other banks, without being charged extra by the CU. True, the bank that owns the ATM still charges me $1.50, but still, that’s one charge where most people have to pay two.
Yeah my grandma used to be an accounting clerks, so I’ve been told alot to get my bank account tracking in order. Just need to set up quicken and keep track of more stuff I suppose. Maybe I should switch my investing money from sharebuilder to a discount broker that offers general accounts with a debit card, and then have a C.U. account for my rent checks. Then I’d get interest on my bank balance.
Used to have a savings account with wells fargo until I realized that 0.whatever % interest was so pathetic as to be pointless.
For some reason, when people overdraft, they treat the bank’s absurdly high overdraft fee as a “punishment” for them and, because it’s “their fault”, they tend to complain far less than any similarly large bank fee. Don’t blame the banks for this, blame human nature.
I’m awful with keeping track of things and on a couple occasions I’ve overdrawn my account my a few dollars (literally, less then $5). One time I overdrew by 55 cents because I thought my paycheck had already cleared (usually did right away). This caused a $40 overdraft fee, which then made my 3 month gym membership get rejected, which caused another overdraft fee and added a $70 fee to my gym membership. Long story short, this whole thing cost me $250.
I got credit based overdraft protection (they offered me a $1000 credit card with like 9% interest) and this has pretty much solved this problem.
You don’t need Quicken, you simply need to write down your transactions in your account journal as they occur. Quicken is very good for balancing, long term tracking, and budgeting, but for “how much money do I have” it’s not that much help. You have to keep track as you spend it. Otherwise it’s simply a case of “What do you mean I’m broke? I still have checks left!”
No, go ahead and blame the banks. They’re taking full advantage of this aspect of human nature for profit. If you were to get mugged by a thug who had observed that for some reason people didn’t pay attention to their surroundings when they’re distracted by a knife or a gun in their face, you’d still blame the thug, right? The banks are no different.
I haven’t bothered balancing my check book for years–I only write 3 checks a month, so there’s no need to keep track of them. The rest is paid with my credit-unions on line bill paying service or my credit card (with the same CU, so I can pay it off in full each month on the same site).
I had nearly the exact same thing happen to me. The bank had charged me a fee because my account was below the limit. I didn’t know this and withdrew $$ from the ATM. Because of the fee, I overdrew. Needless to say I was kinda peeved when I found out a few days later after the overdraft fees began to stack up.
I called the bank and let them know (with great restraint) how I felt about them letting me take money out that wasn’t there in the first place. They said it was their policy to let account holders take out more sometimes, which would be great except for the painful fees that they attach to it.
In the end they waived the fees and my account was back to normal.
Agree with everyone else re: tracking money and online systems (I do everything I can online but not everyone likes that method).
But, IMHO, being charged twice for the one withdrawl is unacceptable. Phone the bank, complain, write a letter, move your account, whatever. Sure it’s your fault, but billing the charges seperately so they can hit you with two fines is just underhand.
Is this sort of thing standard practice in the US ? I know UK banks have some fairly sneaky charging systems but a lot of them have been made to back down due to public pressure and generally they’ll be reasonable about refunding charges.
So the banks are equal to a mugger because you (collective) are too much of an idiot to write down what you spend and then subtract it from your balance, so you know how much money you actually have to spend? :rolleyes:
I really don’t know what’s so difficult about this concept. If you have $500 in your account, and you write three checks for various things totalling $350. Then you only have $150 left - period. It doesn’t matter when the checks clear or what the bank says your balance is - that money is as good as gone. Don’t blame anyone but yourself if you decide to withdraw money in an amount more than $150. Of course the bank will let you - it doesn’t know (nor should it) what transactions you have pending - that’s your job.
Additionally, even if your balance appears not to be high enough to allow any specific withdrawal, many people have overdraft protection or similar features on their account that allow them to over-withdraw and auto-transfer from another account, or have an auto-loan generated. It’s not the bank’s job to protect you from yourself, especially since in this case, it appears that the OP was using an ATM not even associated with his own bank (I don’t know how ATM technology works, but I’m assuming there’s at least a remote possibility that the home bank might have acted differently based on the characteristics of the account).
Strange, I did not read the OP that way. It may be that I am just not looking at it through a slavish worship of all things capitalist filter.
I don’t think that anyone objects to overdraft fees, in general. I know that I don’t. I think what is at issue is that they are ridiculously high, and the bank pulls crap like was listed in the OP and generally act like a bunch of load sharks
Another example of this is the way that they clear transactions. Most banks clear them largest amount first, and then in descending order. If you are close to an overdraft, this will ensure the maximum amount of transactions for which the bank can charge an overdraft fee. A logical way to clear things would be in the order received. An actual customer friendly way to do this would be smallest to largest to minimize the fees.
It really is no surprise that folks hate banks. They suck.
Oh aren’t you just the cutest lil thang. :dubious:
Actually, in my case I was hit with two fees that I knew nothing about. Then I went to withdraw money in an amount that would’ve left me with some in it if not for the fees. I admit my account was low, but I had been keeping track of it properly.
This issue has been discussed endlessly, and the simple explanation is that transactions are processed from the top down because it’s assumed that you’d want your higher transactions (such as, say…rent or mortgage) to pass before your smaller transactions (such as, say…$5 worth of shampoo from Target).
But honestly, it’s all pretty simple. Think overdraft fees and banking practices are odious? Then don’t spend more money than you have and you won’t ever have to worry about it.
Only if you use the ATM of a bank that isn’t the bank your money is at.
I try to stop and check my balance every time I pass a National City ATM. Most of my bills are paid for automatically so I’m always worried that I’ll screw up and withdraw money that isn’t there. I’d suggest checking your account often and saving the most recent receipt in your wallet so you can open it and know exactly how much money you have.