My roommate accidentally bounced the rent check she wrote me this month. My bank account didn’t register that the check was even in pending status, it showed that it had cleared. Then the next morning it showed me being negative because her check had bounced out of my account. Thanks to this, I now have almost $200 in fees at the bank and I am sure that they have reported me to Chexsystems or whatever that system is where they report delinquent accounts. I immediately transferred over money from savings to cover it, but I was never offered overdraft protection and it didn’t occur to me to ask for it when I set up the account since I didn’t figure I would ever need it. I always have at least $500 in my checking account and I thought that would be enough cushion, but apparently not.
I have a fantastic financial history. I have a credit score of 826 and haven’t gone negative in my bank account since before I graduated high school. I do not want an error made by someone else to have such a huge negative impact on my account, so I am going to talk to someone at the bank tomorrow. What I am wondering is if anyone here has ever worked in a bank/known someone who worked in a bank/been in a similar situation and could tell me what to expect. Is it realistic to expect them to waive at least some of the charges? If they can’t do that, what are the odds that they would avoid reporting me to whatever financial powers that be so that I don’t have to have this black mark (or should I say red) on my accounts?
I am in the process of losing the crazy-ass roommate. Unfortunately her name is on the lease as well so I can’t just change the locks while she is gone one day, but I am taking steps to get out of this particular living situation. At this moment though I am trying to run damage control for the situation at hand.
That being said, has anyone ever sucessfully gotten the bank to waive fees or prevent them from reporting you to the chexsystems people or the credit bureaus?
I may be wrong but I do know a little about dealing with the credit bureaus. I don’t think it will affect your credit score at all. They don’t have entries for bounced checks or even any late payments that are under 30 days late. You can pay every single bill late every month and it will never affect your credit score unless you break that 30 day barrier. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t fight it. That is a lot of money in fees and banks and other companies have their own penalties for being late.
You’ve got a fair shot at getting the overdraft fees reversed, or at least part of them, if you have an excellent history w/ your bank and no previous overdrafts. As Shagnasty points out, it’s unlikely to affect your record w/ the credit bureaus. Set up overdraft protection, just in case.
The bank my be reasonable and forgive a portion of the charges. Talk nice with them and explain the situation…usually they want to keep your business and will sometimes let infrequent situations slide. I wouldn’t worry about the credit bureaus being involved, since your account wasn’t delinquent (just overdrawn, and you covered it when you discovered it).
Last month I had transferred money from my chequing to a high-interest (3.25% :rolleyes: ) account and a payment went through that put me overdrawn by $5. They charged me $20 and then started charging 20% interest on that. I called them and tried to figure out the source of the error. They saw that this was not a common occurance and offered me overdraft protection up to 2000 at 8% (no monthly fee), and credited me the overdraft charge. It was a painless process, and I ended up paying them .04 in interest charges for my mistake. Why would they bother? They have now ‘sold’ me another product that they hope I will use (and pay interest on). (They’d tried to sign me up for the overdraft protection previously but wanted $5/month for the privilege…I don’t let my account get to that point, so it was a waste to pay for it.)
BTW, if they still charge you for something, make sure you pass it on to your roomie…she’s the one who caused the fee charges.
Chexsystem’s reporting is a bit different from other kinds of credit reporting. Nevertheless, I doubt the bank has reported this overdraft. They tend to report overdrafts that aren’t made good. Yours was.
I am glad to hear that this won’t impact my credit! That was my biggest concern. I worked in customer service for several years so hopefully all that experience will come in handy now that I am on the customer side of the equation. I am sincerely hoping that they will waive at least some of the fees and give me a chance to sign up for overdraft protection but as long as they don’t report me as being delinquent to anyone I can deal with the $200 loss.
The people at the bank were wonderful! They waived all but $10 of the fees I was charged and set me up on overdraft. They also said this would not affect my credit in any way. Woot!