Is this normal NSF/overdraft fee behavior? Bank of America

Factual Questions
21

Unfortunately SenorBeef, unless you can point out a clear violation of their published policy, you are probably SOL to fix things. Consider how much you mean to that bank – nada. Unless you have other accounts or mortgages, your puny $50 balance account isn’t worth their time. I’m surprised it is worth yours – don’t they have a minimum balance requirement, below which they levy a monthly fee? My bank does, anytime the account dips below $500, even for one day, and I lose a fiver.

The only reason they might play nice with you is because they know they will reap huge rewards from your account in the future due to the bullshit fees, and they expect you to slip up once in a while.

22

Yes, banks do not like small accounts.

I’ll leave out the name of this one, but i suspect it was not unique.

They ran an analysis of calls to Customer Support.

What they found was that the MAJORITY of calls were from people with an average balance of $40. They were finding out if they could draw another $20 from an ATM, and couldn’t be bothered to balance their accounts themselves, when the bank would do it for free

New project: Add function to to Customer Service system whereby:
If transaction is terminated with PF11 (you know it as F11; the P stood for “Program”), bill for the call
If transaction was terminated with PF12, waive fee.

The initial fee was either $.50 or $1.50.

The nnotice of the new fee was widely announced.

It was the second month that those calls stopped - it still took actually losing the money to convince most of them that it was a real fee.

In the 80’s, the number I saw for cost to process a check was $8.00. Yes, I did some work on the check sorting machines and saw the little strip of paper attached to a check.
The REAL reason: for whatever reason, that check could not be read by the machine. The operator picks it out of the reject basket, takes it to a machine and types in the TR, account, check number and amount. The check is then inserted into that machine, which prints the slip and applies it. The check (now readable) is tossed back into the input hopper.

For those who have never received a cancelled check: Once upon a time, long, long ago, the DDA statement included all the checks they had posted to that account that period. Wasn’t a nice touch?

23

This kind of crap is why I keep encouraging my friends who use BoA and other “national” banks to switch to the small, local bank I’ve used for almost 20 years. I have no minimum-balance requirement, and I’m not getting charged for every little thing. In the rare event that I inadvertently overdraw my account (very unlikely now, since I no longer use checks for anything), my bank just goes ahead and honors the transaction (though there are limits to this). They’ll charge me a small fee for that, but by honoring the transaction they save me from getting slapped with a fee by the other party.

They also refrained from being greedy during the '90s boom, and didn’t hand out home loans willy-nilly to people who weren’t qualified, so they didn’t get hit with big losses when the market crashed. There’s a sign posted in my local branch, reassuring customers who keep hearing about other banks charging fees for things that used to be free. “We did not lose money by issuing bad housing loans, so we do not need to create fees to recoup lost income.”

After hearing stories about the big banks, I’ve come to realize that my bankers are actually honest, principled, and ethical. And I’ve seen enough to be confident that my bank isn’t going to sell out to one of the big banks.

24

This kind of standard, disclosed behavior by banks is why I just don’t use my debit card for purchases. Ever. It’s for the ATM only. Everything else goes one of several credit cards, because they’re so much safer. That, and because I get free stuff from them.

But to the OP, I understand that this is normal behavior. I have not, however, ever experienced it.

25

I think thew answer you are looking for is change banks and enjoy the the few cents on the dollar you get in the class action suit settlement years from now.

And yes… Bank of America did just settle a suit for reordering transactions to inflict maximum overdraft fees.

You could always open a claim with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at http://www.consumerfinance.gov/ on the off chance that it takes more than a few years for the banks to staff the key positions.

26

Predatory practice? If I disclose to you that I’m going to break your kneecaps you if you don’t pay your loan on time, you have the choice to not do business with me. There are thousands of banks and credit unions in the United States.

27

That doesn’t make it non-predatory. Telling you that I am going to do something wrong doesn’t somehow make that something not wrong. Not to mention that you would have disclosed that kneecap clause in small print specifically designed to be as opaque and time consuming to read as possible, so you still did everything possible to avoid telling me information you knew I would find relevant.

I know from experience that Bank of America is pretty bad about that, and, as reported, BoA has been sued many times for these underhanded practices. So I do agree you probably shouldn’t bank there. But acting like the tactics aren’t predatory? That’s ridiculous.

28

Story had a surprise happy ending. He agreed that the grocery purchase should’ve never been processed, therefore the other charges should’ve never resulted in a fee, so he refunded them.

He did say that while the grocery purchase should’ve been declined, and he couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t, there’s no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again despite also acknowledging that my account is set to decline-all status. He tried to come up with some weak rationalization about how maybe because it was a grocery store, they wouldn’t want to reject people trying to buy necessary food - which is the sort of bullshit rationalization they try to sell people on about processing big payments first so that your rent goes through.