Ooooh, How I had to Bite My Tongue...

[Heksubah]

I worked so hard to avoid being an SC, but let me tell you... I am livid.

So, I apparently have a sucky bank. They waited 4 days to apply a charge that I'd made on my debit card, and then applied it behind other charges that were already made, had cleared, and were not overdraft. Because they applied it behind them it bumped three small charges into the red.

How small? The total overdraft was $11.96. Because it was three charges, they billed me three overdrafts. I am now short $105.00. I cannot afford that and it is ridiculous! I've been on and off the phone with them and have spoken to a supervisor but all they will do is repeat that the charges are valid and they won't do a thing.

On top of all this, they've done that in the past where they applied charges that had been held for some unknown reason on the night before I got paid and then waited 'til I got paid and I never got an overdraft. This time they applied the charges 2 hours before I got paid and a chunk of my paycheck away. (I mention the getting paid bit since my paycheck just deposits into my bank automatically.)

Now my bills are screwed up and I am short money that I desperately need. I am leaving that bank Monday. I told them I can see paying one fee because, yes, I should have been more careful. The one fee of $35 alone would have hurt me bad. This, though, is just astronomical.

The whole time I was on the phone with them my mother was nearby trying to coax me into being an SC and I had to keep apologizing to the supervisor and telling her I couldn't hear her. I didn't cross that line, I never will if I can help it, but I probably wasn't the happiest customer on the record.

[Andara Bledin]

As much as I sympathize with the overdraft charges really making a mess of finances, it's not the bank's fault you don't have a register to keep track of how much you have versus how much you've spent.

I actually had to keep track of how much I had paid in rent for 13 months because my landlord wasn't cashing any of the checks. For a while, we thought he might be dead. I managed to miss one, went $800 in the hole, and ate fees for 4 overdrafts totalling less than $20. The overdraft charges came to a total of $124. And it was all totally my own fault.

I doubt changing banks will help. Pretty much all banks will hit you with overdraft fees when you go over.

Also, don't necessarily blame your bank. I've had the companies that did the charge be the ones to fail to apply the charge. Or, more accurately, their processing company took their own sweet time getting the information to my bank. Properly, a debit is supposed to come out of your account immediately. Only credit card transactions should have any sort of delay.

^-.-^

[Kiwi]

Thats why I always have a buffer in the transaction account, I keep $500 as a "zero" balance. It took me a year to get it to that amount and believe me it killed me... no brought coffees, no impulse chocolate bars nothing extra.

I decided to do it after I had $55 in charges from being $6.50 short one day. Kyle and used his card and I didnt know about it and whamo.... fees fees fees

[Thrifty]

Can I ask what bank did this to you? I only ask because National City used to be my bank and they did that same crap to me. Just curious if it's the same company.

[Heksubah]

It was Bank of America.

As far as building a buffer, I can't right now. I have $1000 in debts to my mother, at least $14,000 in debt on my car to pay in monthly payments (yay for my new car! *snuggles it*), $600 in medical bills, and I have my boyfriend flying in from Ireland in August so I need to save every last cent I have so we can have some outings while he's out here. (I want to take him to see the Cardinals play in St. Louis since I've turned him onto baseball.)

Until I pay off the $1000 and August has passed, I have no means to save anything at all aside from for bills and his visit.

[katie kaboom]

In the OP's defense, i know BOA has a habit of pulling shit like this on their customers. I've had similar problems with them and it is quite annoying and stressful.

[powerboy]

Back when I had BOA, I didn't put a check in the box, that says that the money from my savings could be used in my checking if I get short. I had $2,500 from my grandparents were saving since I was a baby, in my savings. I was saving it up to buy my own vehicle at that time. Didn't happen, BOA took that money without me authorizing them too. Also, they charged me for things I didn't buy. And when I found that out, I called them, and they got an attitude with me for me. My current bank took $75 from me, and I just emailed them to find out what is going on.

[ladodger34]

Lemme tell you about a great story I have from BoA. Back when I was a younger man, I was very bad about keeping up with my finances. I was terrible about it sometimes (hangs my head in shame). At the same time, I kind of knew what was going in and out of my account. Right about the same time that I was going to get paid, I had a few "automatic" (see debit transactions) that were supposed to happen. $50 for my DSL, $15 for my gym, etc. but I didn't quite have that amount in my account. Rather than denying the transaction, BoA decided to allow the transactions to happen and rather than being $100 in the whole, it turned into $300 before I knew it.

Knowing that my paycheck was going to half of that, I decided to close my account while I was ahead of the game. I still had $50 in my account, but I called BoA to close the account. The nice lady on the line said "Why don't we keep the account open until the $50 is gone and close it cleanly" or something like that. I wish my dumbass would have known better, but they let every debit (ie automatic payments I hadn't taken care of) go through and I ended up owing them about $400 for $100 in charges.

I took responsibility for all of the charges but I wish the lady would have told me that going in to the bank to close my account was better than doing it over the phone and that even after my $50 ran out, they would still allow charges to my account.

[Kiwi]

you might be intersted in this article, its entitled "when banks turn evil"

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Banking/BetterBanking/WhenBanksTurnEvil.aspx

[Andara Bledin]

I have BofA. When I make a deposit, the funds are available to me immediately, even when that deposit is a personal check. The only fees I have ever been charged are for when I overdraft my account. Whenever I have had a problem with fraudulent charges, they have been no trouble at all to work with to get things cleared up.

Both I and my brother had sever problems with Wells Fargo, however. They would hold paychecks for days (illegal in Califrnia) and pile up the fake charges as high as they could. Shortly after I abandoned my account with them (they wanted me to pay $80 in overdraft fees because they, yet again, didn't credit my paycheck), they got hit with a major fine for the way they would hold all deposits until after they had cleared all of the withdrawals, and they would order the withdrawals to start with the largest so that if a person overdrafted they could charge the maximum in penalties. They're pulling the same stunt with my brother.

On the other hand, my mother and aunt had seperate accounts and a joint business account, and BofA could not manage to get the business account sorted. Only one of them could get an ATM card out of them, and only the other one was authorized to write checks. They fought with BofA for months before dumping them.

They moved to Wells Fargo and had absolutely no issues whatsoever for the duration that they banked with them.

All banks suck. It just depends on the branch, the type of account, and what day you happen to need service.

^-.-^