I expect there could be several genuine reasons why the OP did not have a credit card. Also, he may have heard what he wanted to hear when he spoke to the bank.
However, the “put upon” nature of the threads does get a little way along to raising flags.
He deposited his check via ATM on a Saturday morning. I can’t imagine any functioning adult with an ounce of living brain cells that lives in the US not realizing they wouldn’t have access to their funds Monday morning. The ‘balance / available balance’ has been around for decades.
Banks can be blood-sucking leaches…but this one ain’t the banks fault, it’s the OP’s fault for not having even half a clue. He let his bank balance go down to zero and gambled that he’d be able to buy gas Monday morning. He created the problem himself and thus gets very little sympathy from me.
Seriously. I don’t bother carrying cash with me these days and I sure as hell don’t bring my checkbook wherever I go. If I check my account with my bank and confirm there are funds in it, why wouldn’t I feel perfectly comfortable stopping to get gas or do any other shopping I needed to do. I’m 34 years old if you need that piece of information to properly judge me.
Well, I may only be 25, but I know that money in the ATM isn’t immediately available (as I said, mine clears either at midnight or at opening the next day), so I don’t run out and try to spend money that hasn’t cleared yet. I think what others are saying is that an adult, knowing this is how it works, should not run their bank account balance down to zero, counting on the immediate availability of their next check. As others have said, that’s why many of us set ourselves a false “zero” ($100 for some, $1000 for others, $10,000 for even others) that we don’t let the accounts drop below, just in case we need things like gas. I don’t carry cash either, but I know there’s always some money in my account because I’ve forced myself to save over the years so there’s a balance to float on.
Fair enough, I missed the part earlier about the deposit being on a Saturday. Still, though, I feel like it is ridiculous for the bank to report an available balance that is incorrect, when a customer has called in to check. (If that is indeed what they reported.)
Agreed. If the bank knows that you’ve got two balances, the person on the phone needs to give each and every customer both when asked, “What’s my balance?”
:o It took a long time for me to realize this, because I never ran into a situation where I had less money in the account than what was on the cheque. It was my spoiled child moment. I thought everyone could immediately access the funds and never understood what people meant by having to wait for the cheque to clear.
The main reason checks still exist in the US (although they are getting rarer and rarer) is that in this country there is still no good mechanism for sending money electronically between two personal bank accounts. There are easy-to-use systems for electronically paying bills to most large corporations, but if you want to pay your neighbor $50 for babysitting your daughter, you pretty much have to give her cash or a check.
My understanding is that this is not the case in other places, that there are simple means to send money electronically from one personal bank account to another in most European countries, for example.
For those who say this is a result of poor money management skills, look, this was a one-time predicament that got me into a situation where my checking account was at zero. And I do not have credit cards because I got myself into a deep financial hole when I was much younger and I stopped using them altogether (although situations like this make me think about reconsidering).
Everyone goes through unexpected financial expenses. That is what led to my account being drained. So when I got my check in the mail I went to deposit it as soon as I could (which was Sat). Knowing that my bank was familiar with both me and the check writer of the check I was depositing, come Monday I called to check on that deposit’s status. I was told I had a certain amount of money in my account. But I feel that the bank should have told me that none of that money was currently accessible. And actually, when I called back, the bank didn’t seem to even know WHY I couldn’t access my money and had to re-route my call to the main Corporate center and have them figure out why. So the bank clearly didn’t have their own policies well-known by their own employees.
And, I don’t keep most of my money in my checking account. My money is in investment accounts, which isn’t instantly accessible. I generally keep my checking account in good control, but like I said, stuff came up.
I can relate to the fear of credit cards. I also got into trouble with them and now hate using them. If I do, I pay it off immediately. Last week I bought concert tickets for a bunch of friends and no one has paid me back yet. I want to pay this off ASAP because having a balance drives me nuts. Knowing me I will pay off this rather large sum with my own money rather than leave the balance till they all pay me. But not having a credit card was NEVER an option. There are a must for buying things online, booking hotels and rental cars, things like that. You never want to use a debit card for things like that.
There’s not only that, but some banks will even place the hold on another account. For example, at one time if I deposited a check larger than the account balance in my checking account, the hold was placed against a CD I had in the same bank.
I deposited a large check today and on the receipt it stated that $200 was available right away, (50% - $200) was available on 7/25, and the remaining 50% available on 7/27. This is a credit union. I haven’t noticed this before but I rarely deposit checks this large.
However when I deposit our condo fee checks (I keep the account) the balance is always given to me without the checks I’ve just deposited. They specifically say it’s my “available balance”.
As I mentioned earlier, I highly recommend getting one. I was in the exact same situation as you at 31. But as I said, no credit is if anything, worse than bad credit to lenders. In a couple of years I want to buy my first new car, and a few years after that, my first house. I will need credit for both, so I have started establishing it.
Oh, and FTR, my credit union also holds checks until they are clear…I deposited a check for $8000 and something like $500 was available that day, $4000 of it a few days later, $4000 more some days after that. It’s weird how they do it. Of course I had only 1/8 of that in the account before that.
Hey, $500 would still have been plenty to fill up my gas tank.
I know, that’s the beauty of credit unions. I’m not sure what my bank would have done (I have accounts in both). Probably laughed their fool heads off at me. 
But again, I HIGHLY recommend the credit card. Putting gas on it every month is a great way to improve your credit rating!
As I’ve said, it was an out-of-the-ordinary, one-time situation.
And one thing is nagging me; why can you go and cash a check and instantly get your money but if you deposit that check, the money is “held” for a certain amount of time before you can access it? Let’s say it was a weekday, during business hours, when I wanted to deposit that check. Rather than wanting to go inside and deal with the hassle, I simply deposited it through the ATM. Now, according to my bank, once they get and process that deposit, THEN they must hold it for an additional 24 hours before relinquishing those funds. But if I had simply gone into the bank and cashed the check, I would have had all the money instantaneously. So what exactly is the rationale behind this “hold” in a situation like this?
I’d still like someone who is “in the know” to explain this for me…
Often you can’t just go in and cash a check unless you have enough in your account to cover it.
Not the case at my bank. I have done so many times where I didn’t have the corresponding funds in my account when cashing a check. Perhaps if it’s a PERSONAL check this would be the case but it’s not.
I can’t possibly know if this is what happened with your bank- but years ago, when I was a bank teller there were certain employers the branch had an agreement with. We provided them with cards to give employees and would cash paychecks drawn on their payroll account, whether the employee had an account with us or not. Only those employers,and only the payroll account- if they wrote a check to a vendor from a different account , the standard policies regarding holds applied. This wouldn’t work if a person deposited one of those checks through the quick deposit or the ATM , though. Not so much because there was a specific policy against it ( cashing the check at the teller window was an exception to the normal policy) but because when those checks are being processed, no one is looking to see if the check is drawn on the payroll account of one of the hundred or so companies we had that arrangement with.