Government agency overseeing banks criticizes bank fees

I agree with you that getting cash back from buying gum at a store is much more effective .. at least you get something for you money spent... but still what kind of bothers me is like so many rules the point is often forgotten.... If I overdraft and i don't have the money to pay ok charge me I understand I shouldn't have overdrafted but when I accidentally overdrafted and put the money in to cover before the over draft is officially processed that new money should clearly eliminate any fear of a charge... at least that's how I feel.. it's not like I don't have the money .. it may just have been a timing thing .. I remember I went to the gas station thought I had 40 bucks on my gas card but I only had 32 I pumped 35 went home checked then ran straight to the bank to cover it .. fortunately my bank was smart and it covered my mistake... any other way would be dumb I feel.

Adrien
http://www.TheNakedHippie.com

Banks, and CC companies are evil....Listen to this..

Chase Penalizes Customers For Saving Money Too Long

http://www.curiousread.com/2007/08/chase-penalizes-customers-for-saving.html

Here's their game. They pay the largest check first, no matter what order they come in, so every check after that bounces and they can charge an overdraft fee for each one. Otherwise all the little checks would clear and they could only charge one fee for one check. The way they do it even the overdraft fees cause more shortages. This can easily spiral out of contrtol and their rationale is that their customers prefer to have the larger check covered. Pul-ease! Did you get a vote on that? I didn't. It apparently has NOTHING to do with them being able to charge your account $35 per check. Yeah, right. This has even happened when you make a deposit after 3 PM, at THEIR window, time stamped THAT day, but enetered on the next day's paperwork. Meanwhile they can process an incoming check or debit up to midnight AGAINST your account on that date. Another learning curve when you find that out. And of course (duh) the young, low income, and may I add old, are the victims of this. The whole system, including loans, is set to favor the affluent. They get a lower rate when they need money, they have check protection, and they usually have an inside track to the branch manager in order to get a phone call to warrent off these pesky oversights. We wouldn't want to have them move their account elsewhere. But as I pointed out to my bank, people like me are where they are making their biggest money and they're not fooling anyone. I'm glad to read that someone is at least looking at it. It's a disgrace!

I agree, my husband and I got raped by 5/3rd bank because they said it was legal to put a hold on purchaces and start paying the highest one first so they can charge us all that overdraft fees. I think it should be first come first served. Well we closed our account with them because the lady that was explaining all this was a total "beep" and didn't care that we were having problems to begin with cause I was out of work on disability and my husband got laid off from a auto supplier for a month. Now we're worried how we're going to pay our bills when we get laid off this month.

YES, YES, YES YOU ARE SO RIGHT. THEY POST CHECKS IN ORDER TO CREATE OVERDRAFT FEES. I HAVE COMPLAINED ABOUT THIS. THEY MANIPULATE THE TRANSACTIONS IN ORDER TO CREATE MULTIPLE OVERDRAFTS.

The majority of people do not regularly balance their accounts and banks are using it to their advantage.


WORRIED ABOUT TRAILER THEFT?? You need to:

http://www.carrythebigstick.com

It's a joke what these banks get away with. When I was in the hospital giving birth, my husband used our ATM card for everything under the sun. The bank kept allowing these $3 and $5 charges after some bills had cleared and overdrew our account. After I left the hospital, my account already had hundreds of dollars in overdraft fees. So, I immediately, the day after I arrived home, drove to the bank to make a deposit. They then, of course, waited until midnight to post the deposit, meanwhile charging me hundreds of dollars more in overdraft fees on previous charges that came in from days before. Most of these purchases were less than $5. What an expensive nightmare.

Oh MY GOD!! isn't it ridiculous how banks post items to our accounts!...I'll check my account on line one day and have lets say $100 available so i'll make a debit card bill payment for lets say $25, then I'll stop at the store and use my debit card to pick up dinner for lets say $20 then maybe make another debit card purchase for $25, so I should still have $30 left when i check on line at 10pm. WRONG! The next day a check will appear out of the blue (but posted on the prior date when I had $100 avail.) for $95 and all those debit purchases that cleared the day before now are returned and I am charged $35/EACH and the check is bounced as well because the $105 in fees eats up EVERY PENNY!!!!! So instead of the bank bouncing the check and collecting one fee, they switch everything around and collect 4 fees!!!! One month they hit me for over $600 in fees because I didn't realize their scam in time and it screwed up my whole account!

Absolutley. Banks should be reuired to process transactions in the order recieved. Unfortunately now, most if not all banks re-sequence transactions to increase insufficient funds fees.

It works like this. You make a deposit Saturday morning. You pay your yard guy at noon, he takes your check to the bank and cashes it. Monday the bank processes transactions. They process the check to the yard man- drawing your account negative. Then they process the deposit.

Alternately you go the bank saturday morning, check your ballance. Plenty of money. You use your atm card all weekend. Monday a check comes through your account. Banks process the check as of Friday. As such, all your weekend purchases are charged a fee.

It is a legal added fee they can charge. They want you to put your money on their direct deposit service so that they know when your money is coming in and less work for them.

I work for a financial service center. Not a bank, mind you. And if a payroll check bounces with us, the DA of our state will not allow us to go after the company. We are required to go after the individual that got the payroll check. Its absurd!!!

WOW Tom!! Time to change jobs. In the meantime, you do know that your employer is responsible for any overdraft fees you incur because of their bad check. Plus any fees charged for any other checks you bounce because of their bad check.

If this is a habit, you might want to consider called the Wage and Labor Board in your state and report them. Payroll checks should never bounce.

Banks are able to charge you when you deposit a check that bounces because when you hand that check in to the bank and sign the back it is saying "Whom ever wrote this check is a good person, and I trust them."

You are right part way. They are doing a good job at over-drafting us . Yes we would be expecting a bite from Jimmy. We need to stand up and say we need a bailout. Don't let them do that to us, they would not let the people get away taking money from them.would it be fair to drop the fees when we are in a recession? How do we do it? Write our congress and keep speaking. The more the word goes around the more people hear it the more they will speak . Soon it will get to the right ears that can make that differance.

It is not so much the idea of them charging for an over draft, it is the idea that they make the big check or charge overdraft the account, and charge you 35.00 for all the small ones. Then if you don't fix it the NEXT day, they start charging you a daily rate as well,7 dollars at some banks, on each count, is what I have heard, that is added to the already out rageous charge of 35 dollars for a 5 dollar expense, and more than one if you have used the card that many tmes for small extractions. So, you may as well figure 100% plus profit or interest per day on some charges. No, the banking industry doesn't need bailing out, the people of this country need bailing out of being totally ripped off by the elite, and CEO's of htis country that over charge the normal working person in order to have all thier fun and fineries.

Yes Steve, and on top of that it is my understanding that they process all of the checks/debits BEFORE they process any deposits to the account, thus greatly increasing the chance that checks will bounce. Nice, eh?