Fuck you BankOne - The Story of my First Bounced Check

The BBQ Pit
1

This fucking sucks. Last week I bought a new guitar, for app. $430. We had about $650 in the checking account at the time (or so we thought). During the next week we wrote 7 checks for a total of about $150. Then my wife called to check our balance, and saw that were almost $600 in the red.

It turns out that a post-dated check my wife had written got deposited early. This check lowered us from $650 to around $200. Then when the check for the guitar came through, this reduced the balance to -$230 or so, and added a $25 penalty. The remaining checks, totalling $150 came through and were paid, but each one cost us an extra $25.

This was bad enough, but I thought I was over it. Mistakes get made, the check that shouldn’t have been deposited was to a nice older lady who has been having some medical problems in her family and I can’t really blame her for her honest mistake. We got paid that week so we were able to bring the balance back to positive.

My wife checks our balance again today, and there is an extra $430 in there. It turns out that the bank did NOT pay the $430 check to Mars Music, it bounced. They corrected this later, but the thing that is really making me mad is that those 7 checks that I paid a total of $175 in penalty fees on WOULD HAVE CLEARED since my balance should not have gone negative, the bank did not pay the check.

I am out $175 plus whatever the fee for the bounced check will be, when I should only be out the fee for the bounced check.

I’m going to try and get the money back from the bank, but this is going to be so tiring - a few months back I had my debit card stolen and it took me about 3 months for the bank to finally get my money back and recover the overdraft penalties that resulted from that. This was 3 months of talking to various customer service people who all told me different stories, who all had to have what happened explained to them because of their inability to keep notes on what is going on in their customer service database, and this was an issue as simple as ‘The card was stolen and $800 worth of purchases were made with it’. This is going to be even more difficult to pound into their thick skulls.

I’m feeling tired already, and I haven’t even contacted them yet.

2

As one poster with a Japanese moniker to another, let me be the first to say “that sucks, man.”

That sucks, man.

However…

First off, even if the nice old lady deposited the check early, the teller should have been paying attention to the date on that check. It doesn’t matter when she deposits or attempts to cash the check…the money can NOT be collected until the date on the check.

But if her bank is not the same as your bank, I’m not sure how you would go about getting BankOne to waive the fee. But banks do wave fees, so you might want to talk to them…tell them the story, see what they can offer you. Expecially if you’re a long time customer, banks can be very lenient about this sort of thing.

Sorry about the whole thing…sounds pretty sucky. Things like this can really make one feel less dependable even though it isn’t your fault…

3

The date on a check is irrelevant. I could write you a check dated June 1, 2050 and you could cash it today. I don’t know why it works that way, but it does.

I bounced a check at Bank One once upon a time, and they covered the check and charged me a fee. $25 - about the same amount I would have paid as a fee to the business at which I bounced the check.

I ditched Bank One about a year ago in favor of a small, local bank. I couldn’t be happier. Nobody asks for my license because the tellers all know me. No low balance fee, no “teller fee,” no fees at ALL! Ahh, it fucking rules.

It seems like the larger the banks get, the more disorganized, unfriendly, and fee-hungry they get. Find a local bank. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to use them for a few months, or even years, before Bank One buys them out (which was how I originally got stuck with Bank One in the first place).

4

Originally in the first place? Sheesh, I need some sleep! :slight_smile:

5

The date on a check is totally relevant. I used to be a teller at Star Bank in Cinci and one of the first things they tell you is you can’t cash post-dated checks.

The reason this is one of the first things they tell you is that after a long day of deposits, withdrawals, car payments, and bitch-ass customers who yell at you when you want to see their driver’s license (not referring to you, necessarily…;)), it can be an easy detail to miss. This is probably why you have been able to cash them in the past.

And if you think they get mad about the driver’s license thing, you oughta see them when you refuse to cash a post-dated check.

But…but…it is okay to DEPOSIT a post-dated check…so long as you know that the money won’t actually enter your account until the date on the check. I was missing that detail…but you can’t get cash for it, at any rate.

6

So now I’m confused…there’s no way that lady depositing that check could have affected you, assuming the check was post-dated…even if she managed to get it cashed by someone not paying attention to the date, the bank still doesn’t dip into your account until the date on the check.

7

Well, Kyomara, can you write a letter to my bank? See, they say that it makes no difference what date is written on the check–it only matters what day it is cashed/deposited on. They say that if this was policy, people could get out of paying their bills on time just by “accidentally” putting the wrong date on the checks when they pay. The business would consider it paid but the bank wouldn’t back up the check until the later date.

8

Well, shit.

Now it’s two against one and I was never a very good bank teller anyway. So what is the really important rule I know they have regarding post-dated checks if it’s not that they can’t be cashed? It was definitely something…any ideas?

9

I worked for a company that processed checks, and the only thing we had to keep an eye open for was ‘Paid In Full’ or ‘PIF’, in that case we had to send them to our collections department to verify that it really was paid off. Dates did not matter, they were all ran through the OCR even if they were postdated.

10

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Kyomara *
**The date on a check is totally relevant. I used to be a teller at Star Bank in Cinci and one of the first things they tell you is you can’t cash post-dated checks.

[QUOTE]

I had a situation very similar to the OP a few months ago. Could it be different state by state or perhaps even bank by bank? My Credit Union also told me that the date on a check is irrelevant and that they will cash any check on the date it is presented.

11

Here’s a link to a past thread with some info in it.

12

I few years ago, I was in a car accident (no fault of mine, I was broadsided by a woman pulling out of a parking lot) in which my car was in the shop for nearly 6 weeks. Because I needed a car to get back and forth to work, and the other woman’s insurance company had not yet officially accepted the liability for the accident, I rented a car on my own with the understanding that the other insurance company would pay.

The problem was that I didn’t have a credit card at the time, so I used my debit card (this was several years ago, before rental car companies stopped accepting debit cards). I had explained the situation to the lady at the rental car company (about how the other insurance company would be ultimately responsible), and she told me that I could get the car for $150 deposit, and they would just collect the total bill from the insurance company when I brought the car back. All well and good. For about 2 weeks.

I started getting overdraft notices in the mail. One or two every day for a week. As soon as I got the first one, I checked my bank account to find that the rental car company took not only the $150 deposit, but had continued to charge my debit card the full rental cost each week rather than collecting the total from the insurance company when I turned the car in as it was explained to me.

The cost of the car had completely tapped my account. I scrambled to cover the overdrafts and get things straightened out, but by the time I got it under control, 9 different transactions (checks, debit card purchases, etc.) had been rejected, at a cost of $25 each.

I spent a month begging both my bank and the rental car company to either waive or cover the charges. The bank basically took the hard line that the overdrafts were legitimate and wouldn’t credit them back. The rental car company pointed out that thier contract (which I basically didn’t even read, my fault for trusting what the lady told me) allowed them to collect the money at will, despite anything the clerk might have told me at the time of the rental.

So, I was out $225 (which I could hardly afford, being a recently graduated college student, living paycheck to paycheck), and no one really gave a shit. That account was so screwed up that I closed it and went to a different bank. I might add that I have never had a bounced check outside of this particular situation. You’d think that would have counted for something, but apparently not.

Bastards.

13

Ug. What a perfect time for me to stumble into this thread. Just yesterday I learned that I had bounced a check. According to my records I still had about 20 bucks in the account. Then I went and wrote another bad check to buy some gas. Hey, don’t look at me like that! I didn’t have any way to get home. My bank statement is lost in the mail somewhere so I can’t figure out where my numbers went wrong. I called this mornin a little pissy because I should have had my bank statement last week. If I had it then, there is a possibility I wouldn’t have overdrafted. I think I’m gonna bum some money from the boy to get it in the bank before the gas check clears. Might as well avoid one of those $25 charges.

FTR, this isn’t a habit of mine. I’ve only bounced a check once before. I don’t know where I went wrong. . . I’m such a loser. sigh

Damn this monitary system! Lets go back to the barter system. Dem were the good ol’ days.

14

I can check with my mom later (she’s a Senior VP at one of the larger banks in California) but I’m pretty sure post-dating a check doesn’t mean diddly. The check gets processed as soon as the bank gets it. In fact, banks usually process checks in descending order of value. So, if you have $200.00 in the bank, and write a two-hundred dollar check and two ten dollar checks, the $200 goes through first to make sure you bounce the next two checks. Doesn’t THAT suck?

15

Nimune nailed it. Pay the big check and NSF the little ones. When the bank charges a fee (my bank is $26.50) and PAYS the check, I can understand. They provided a service, a small lone for a lack of better words. What really pisses me off is when the bank charges $26.50 and RETURNS the check. WTF? That just makes a bad situation worse. If I don’t have enough money to cover a $30.00 check how the fuck does taking $26.50 from me help? And what’s really great is when the check comes through twice before you can cover it. Now you have 2 NSF fee’s and an extra charge from the merchant. And heaven forbid that the bank would actually mail the notices in a timely manner so you can straighten the problem out before you wright more checks. What a scam.

16

loan

The preview button is your friend.

17

BTDT, (been there, done that.)
College student. Mom writes me a check for $200 on an account my Dad closes the week before.
I write 6 checks, Pizza Hut, 7-11, blah-blah in 5 days. By Friday, I receive notices from the bank on bum checks I wrote. They collected $150 off my bounced checks, then charged me 6 bucks for me depositing a bogus check. By the time I got done, the $200 bucks my Mom sent me ended up costing me about $325. Haven’t had a commercial bank account since. (Go Credit Unions!!)

Did I mention the savings account I once had? $216 for spring break. But, $84 bucks below minimum balance. So, for four months, I was withdrawing $9 bucks a month to pay for my under the minimum. I was paying them $9 bucks a month to hold on to my money!!!