Although this may be a bit of a stretch, I think if they felt like it, they could sue you for the $$, which of course is a massive pain in the ass for you, would result in a judgement against you (assuming you didn’t go to court and potentially even if you did) and would make doing much of anything, including buying a house, car, getting a credit card, loan, very very expensive, if not impossible.
For that reason, I think the onus really is on you to try to resolve the issue. If they bank is any size at all, they probably don’t actually need or care about a couple hundred of your dollars beyond just wanting to get their late fees. They probably don’t even care about you as a customer. In my experience, banks really don’t give two shits about people until you owe them hundreds of thousands of dollars, and even then, only marginally. Furthermore, if CheckSystems is anything at all like a credit reporting bureau, having a paid off delinquent item looks better than having a non-paid off delinquent item - in theory, you’d be able to parlay that improvement into a “misunderstanding” with your former bank, and be able to get a chequing account should you need one.
Probably won’t sue. More likely to sell it off to collections, then from a regular collection agency to a more evil one, then on down the line.
By the way, I would be willing to bet a day’s wages that your original terms and conditions included language that indicated that they were NOT liable for accidentally or otherwise permitting debits to authorize when such an authorization would lead to increasing your negative state. It’s been in the fine print of the last four checking accounts I’ve opened.
The fact that the bank’s agent told you what would probably happen if you were on the verge of being overdrawn is unfortunate. Your best tack would be going into the branch of this bank located in the nicest part of town and talking to a customer service representative about getting some of the fees waived. Acknowledge that you made a mistake for which you are responsible and attempt to evoke sympathy for being foolish and confused about the banking system. Feel free to mention that their agent accidentally misled you, as this may provide the intellectual leverage needed to make their representative wish to provide you with the greatest possible discount.
I also loathe the fact that bankers are relying on fees for revenue. It does stink, although I understand that they must make a profit, I really wish they would focus on charging on a basis closer to their cost, rather than arbitrarily. In my ideal world they’d charge 150% of the processing costs of each transaction, rather than giving you free checking and then charging you 500% of the costs of arbitrarily chosen transactions. Also, give me a DISCOUNT for using the ATMs and charge me EXTRA to use a teller. An ATM costs less to buy than what a teller makes in two years, works 24/7, doesn’t steal and counts quicker.
I have trouble seeing the OP as the victim. You overdraft your account, you get charged a fee. I’ve done it, I felt like a fool, I spent more than $100 in fees between the people I wrote the bad check to and the bank fees. Technically, the bank screwed up because the checking account was supposed to be tied to the savings account so the overdraft came out of the savings account but the bank had frozen the savings account due to inactivity. But, I’m the one who wrote a check my account couldn’t cover. I told my bank I wasn’t happy with their service and took my money out of that account (actually I left a few cents in it so they had to send my a statement every month, which went on for a few years until they charged me an ‘inactivity fee’ of the remainder of my account). Now I have an account with a credit union that lets me transfer money from account to account online and had overdraft insurance, which is a free service.
People like the OP is what makes our fees go up…for everyone who doesn’t pay the $10 that it actually might cost to process the overdraft, the rest of us have to pay to make up for that loss. So suck it up, pay your fees, and this too shall pass. Or always pay for everything with cash for the rest of your life.
The OP is a victim because the OP was informed any overdraft would be denied by a representative of the bank. He had all reasons to believe that was the case. He was acting in good faith when he ran transactions, and concluded reasonably he was not overdrawn and continued using the card because the transactions went through. A mistake on the part of the bank manager in explaining the bank policy would be bank manager’s liability. If the policy simply changed and he was informed in one of those fine print notices sent to him, that might or might not be enforceable legally. Of course the bank will claim it definitely is, but nobody wants to find out the hard way through the courts. Even if it is enforceable legally, it is still dishonest, as such notices are obviously specifically designed to be disregarded and hard to understand (tiny fonts, lots of repetition, tiny booklet on bad paper).
If the bank had true interest in informing him of the change of policy they would have sent a point-by-point explanation along with the legal statement. We do not know if this was the case or not, but I would guess it was not since I have never heard of a bank sending one of those before. Plus, the bank has a financial interest in keeping their clients unaware of new fees.
SenorBeef, it is quite possible that your bank did not specifically allow any transaction which overdrew your account, but that you still legitimately incurred a rash of overdraft charges. It is also possible that the bank intentionally maximized those overdrafts to their advantage.
Here’s how it works; Assume you have a balance of $100. You write a check for $95, forget to record it and due to a bout of temporary amnesia, forget that you wrote the check. The next day, you use your debit card for 10 different transactions of $6 to $10 each, totalling $90. By means of some evil cosmic convergence, all of these debit charges and the forgotten check hit your bank on the same day. You have $185 in charges against a $100 balance. Your bank has two choices. It can A) Pay all of the debit card transactions and bounce the $95 check, or B) Pay the check and bounce ALL of the debit card charges. They will always, quite legally, choose option B, resulting in the maximum possible overdraft fees. They will also not violate their agreement not to approve any debit card transactions that would overdraw your account, since at the time the transactions occured, there were sufficient funds to cover the charges. All of which would make your claim of fee ambush completely accurate.
I am sure there are other scenarios not involving writing a check which would give the same results. As others have posted, there are lags in the system, and not all merchants that accept debit card transactions process them the same way or at the same speed.
As for advice, I don’t have any that is nearly as good as what has already been said.