Down to the wire has nothing to do with it. You must be rich and not understand what it is like to only have a finite amount of money. When you are poor, you need to spend all of your money just to survive. Unfortunately, jobs do not pay you in cash, they use either checks or direct deposit, essentially forcing people to put money into banks, whether they want to or not. The entire system is designed to withhold as much cash from people as possible, so that banks can use those funds on investments. That is why withdrawals are instantaneous, and all refunds or deposits often have attached dates or "holds" placed on them. Deposits made after a certain time are registered as the next business day, while ATM or debit withdrawals are instantaneously withdrawn. In addition, withdrawals are ordered (and in many cases re-ordered after-the-fact) to go from largest to smallest, maximizing bank overdraft profits, which in many cases exceed the fees or bills for which would be overdrawn. The whole banking system is a massive scam dating back hundreds of years, designed to tax the poor and reward the wealthy. The smartest thing in the world is to demand cash payment from your employer, engage in the barter system wherever possible, and never use banks at all.

This resulted in me being hit with at $500 fine over Columbous day weekend 2 years ago.I spoke to 2 different branch managers, showed them my check register to proove that had they processed transactions and deposits in the order they occur, I wouldn't have overdrawn. No dice.

Now a happy member of Teachers' Credit Union in Indiana. Very good customer service

You have an extra $500 laying around? And discipline?

I can't relate.

When I was in college and up till a couple of years after Reagan got elected, I never paid ANYTHING on my checking account. Even if a check bounced, which happened twice, I didn't pay a thing. Bank used to make money on interest and loans. They still do but Fees are soooooooooooooooooo much more profitable and short term sighted. To hell with the long term reputation of their institution. Guess who pays the most fees? The middle class. The rich rarely pay anything. I know. I work for SunTrust banks.

Luckily however there are 2 National City branches in our town. First we go to the sattelite branch and cash my paycheck (my employer is to cheap to offer direct deposit). There are no fees for this as I am a national city customer. Then I take the cash to my main branch 3 minutes away and deposit the cash directly avoiding any wait times on clearing checks.

I have done this with personal checks written to me as well and it always works. Once when I complained about the extended wait times on my check deposits I asked about doing this and they said I wasn't allowed to... Well I have been doing it for over a year now without a problem.

If banks are allowed to manipulate the system to their benefit then I feel no remorse doing the same to my benefit.

This was brought up recently as affecting senior citizens the most because of their fixed income. Unfortunately once they were in the trap they just got buried with fees since they were already living near their means. Damn senior citizens with their ferrari's and 80" tvs. Oops forgot to mention their multi-hundred dollar monthly drug habits. Screw their blood pressure.

At 8 PM, I had $33 in my account and spent $46 and theoretically should owe $35+$13. My bank on the other hand, reorders my purchases and I now owe $140+$13. And if I don't catch it in time for the overdraft fees, they will charge me overdrafts for the overdrafts. Why is this wrong? Because my first 3 transactions were not overdrafts. I had money in my account to cover them. While the idea of charging $35 for overdrafts starting at $.01 is a whole other conversation with regard the the horrible way that banks treat their customers, the fact that they can reorder my transactions in a way which incorrectly makes it appear as if I spent money I didn't have 4 times rather than 1 times should be illegal.

I'm thinking it's time for a RICO prosecution of some of these banks.

@CLEADD:

@BeThisWay: What I'd like to see is banks "forgive", say, one incident every other year for those who truly make an accounting mistake.

They do.

@Tsubasa: The bank will refund your fees in the event of fraud. If they don't, you're not asking.

Perhaps we oughta put you on world hunger, too! Then, perhaps, faster than light travel?

Financial wizard or no, even I can see that.

Let me just say that as a bank manager it would be nice if all consumer's shared your view. Even though I work for the bank, I don't agree with how they charge fees, its absolutely ridiculous that they clear items highest to lowest in order to charge $33 fees on all of your $1.58 transactions that post monday after the weekend. Believe me, i have to try and explain it to customers 10 times a day. That being said, the internet banking age has completely changed the way customers perceive banking, they think they can swipe their debit card and wait three days to make a deposit to cover it, because it hasn't "posted". Bottom line is you spent the money and you didnt have it. I could go on like this for hours, but what I always say to customers is "show me your register that shows you recorded your transactions when you did them and you always had a positive balance". Ledger is the key! If your ledger is accurate and you never go negative in your ledger, your bank account won't go negative, that is of course if you know your banks funds availability policies of check deposits. I'm sick of hearing, I went to the ATM and it said my balance was $100. Well yes but you seem to have forgotten about that $99 check you wrote. While fees are certainly exorbitant, and overdraft "protection" and "coverage" can be very misleading to uneducated customers, if you kept a ledger which only takes simple addition and subtraction, you wouldn't have to worry about it.

What about empty envelopes? Assuming envelopes are collected in the morning like the bank I work for does, I could make five deposits into the ATM, empty envelopes, be credit $5000, and have spent it, all before the deposit(s) being discovered by the morning ATM teller and my acct/debit card put on D-block. At least, that's what happened at a few branches for the bank I work at.f

Cash is always immediate before 2pm. IE you deposit cash before 2pm and use some of it, the deposit will go in first. With checks you get the first $100 available immediately and the rest at midnight.

2) Bank at a credit union. I had similar experiences to those listed here when I banked with large regional/national chains; since switching to a credit union I have not had a single bad experience in 5 years.

3) It's a personal choice of course, and not right for everyone, but consider putting all bill payments and expenses on a credit card and paying it off at the end of the month. As long as you are disciplined and don't exceed your credit limit, this can eliminate virtually all problems with banking out of your checking account. Also you can get greater purchase protection.

@RivaPhaethon: You floated a check. Always a gamble. End of story.

"Bankers defend it saying that people would rather their cable bill to bounce than their mortgage payment"

Funny. I don't remember ever being asked my opinion on this. They also never asked before applying "courtesy overdraft."

I'm going to suggest that much of the increase in bouncing check fees is related to Check 21 (law passed in 2003) because now checks no longer need to be sent from bank to bank there is no longer any "float" time. But while Check 21 did away with "float" for debits the banks are still entitled to hold deposits for an extended period of time.

If banks can process debits immediately they also can process deposits immediately they just don't want to.

This is defense is flatly dishonest. They clear all of if anyway. It doesn't matter if it's $400 or $1.00, regardless of how overdrawn you end up.

If you have $401.00 and you then, in 4 transactions, over draft:

9:00 AM -- Debt Card -- $2.00
1:00 PM -- Debt Card -- $3.00
4:00 PM -- Debt Card -- $5.00
6:00 PM -- Debt Card -- $398.00

Assuming they all clear the same day it shows up as:
[Note: My BOA online shows me oldest at the bottom, newest/pending at the top]

Balance: -$111.00

Debt Card - $2.00 - ($35.00 Overdraft) Balance -$111.00
Debt Card - $3.00 - ($35.00 Overdraft) Balance -$74.00
Debt Card - $5.00 - ($35.00 Overdraft) Balance -$36.00
Debt Card - $398.00 - Balance $4.00

Available Balance: $402.00

What was only $6.00 over resulted in $105.00 in over draft fees thanks to their high to low policy.

They clear all of them, regardless of amount. Now, yes, I clearly spent more than I had available, and a fee for that is not unreasonable, but I only actually did that at $6:00PM -- in one transaction; not 3.

It is pretty clear that they just stack it from high to low to maximize the overdraft fees, since their whole argument is based on the implication that smaller transactions would be denied, but they aren't so they are filthy dishonest jerks. Or something.

Fifth-Third did that to my mom recently. Fortunately, the earliest her landlord's ever deposited the rent check is about the 5th of the month.

We're not shooting her for pointing out an obvious preventative measure, we're shooting her for pointing out an obvious preventative measure. She's stating the obvious, and ignoring the fact that this usually happens as an accident. Sounding like a troll doesn't help either. Preventative measures merely reduce the chance of having accidents, or lessen their impact; they don't eliminate them. Even then, such measures may not be possible.

Considering these ridiculous fees are done for the customer's "convenience", do you really want to see what their idea of "forgiveness" is?

However, regardless of what order your transactions show up, if you keep an ACCURATE ledger/register of your account, you simply should never overdraft (assuming your ledger doesn't have negative balances in it).

I have heard in the past that some banks, such as Wachovia, will charge an O/D fee if you "available" balance drops below zero, which is sneaky and dishonest. However, B of A (I know, I use them) only charges if the "actual" balance (ledger) turns red. And they DO let you know if they hold a deposit. Direct deposits always clear the same day they are posted, despite showing as pending through the end of the business day. And, within the re-ordering of transactions, deposits ALWAYS post before any withdrawals/charges.

Yes, banks do have practices that make them more money on overdraft fees. However, the only people these apply to are people who would overdraft ANYWAYS. They don't hold deposits two days longer knowing your check will clear the day before.

Simply put, enough excuses. Keep records, don't overdraft. It's quite simple.

Disclaimer: I used to be a compulsive "overdrafter," beginning when I had an old-school Washington Mutual free checking account back in college. The fees were only $21, but I did it frequently, and finally learned how to avoid it.

chrisjames is right: follow the ledger. Treat any checks/withdrawal funds as gone the day you write the check. Assume deposits will take 3 business days to clear. If there's not enough money to cover all the checks you need to write, choose between the bill's late fee or the bank's overdraft, because you'll probably wind up paying one.

This isn't completely relevant to the topic, but I had one really terrible experience with National City. I was just barely overdraft on my checking account. Fortunately, it was a pay day. So I take the check to the bank and deposit it. One week goes by, and I continue using my debit card. The next Friday, I took my paycheck in to deposit it, then ask for my balance, and I was close to 500 dollars overdraft, after my deposit!Come to find out, the previous Friday the bank's network was down, and somehow that translates to my paycheck getting deposited to someone elses account. There was over 400 dollars in fees! The bank refused to reverse all of the fees, told me that if I closed my account and didn't pay the negative balance then they would sell off the debt to a collections agency. So at that point in time, I had deposited my check, and was still overdraft... I hadn't a pennie to my name. I had to plead with the manager to get 100 dollars of my deposit, so I could eat. It was embaressing and degrading. As soon as I could afford to, I dumped my account with them, and I will never, ever look back.

Love my Chase bank though!

And BoA? They screwed me over and claimed I owed them $250 in fees, for transferring all of my money out to close their account. Apparently, that caused a fee which bounced which caused another fee which bounced...

There was a big mess with fees in England, where they can't be more than actual bank cost - which caused massive changes in bank procedures, and a lot less money for them!

This goes well beyond paying overdrafts. Banks have bizarre rules! While I was in college I was also paying off a small car loan. I went in on a Friday to make a loan payment that wasn't technically due until that Sunday. I knew Monday would be too late. A couple of weeks later I get notice that I owed a late fee from my last payment!

The bank told me that in "bank time" I had made my payment on Monday--because anything after 2:30 is posted the following business day.

I'm not sure how I was supposed to know "bank time" but they refused to take the fee off. And because I didn't pay the late fee until the next payment due date, I had a 30-day late payment on my credit report! I did argue that off, thankfully.

BB&T charged me nearly 200 dollars in ISF charges. I changed banks.

The FDIC requires that a single bank treats ALL (Biz & Pers.) accounts the same when it comes to processing, they can't be selective.

I have Chase and they are OH so generous about taking my money from me. I live paycheck to paycheck, everything gets paid, but then there's nothing left for emergencies or any sort of entertainment. I get my paycheck direct deposited.

Let's say $600 was deposited in the morning. Then I pay all the bills ($250), go to Walmart ($100.25), get gas ($50) and go to the grocery store ($200.12). But then right away I notice that if all the checks clear right away, I would go over 37 cents, but no checks have gone through the bank yet. So I scramble for the change in the car and deposit 50 cents on my way home. This was all during the day, before 5pm. So now I should be 13 cents ahead, right?

Lo and Behold, a couple of days later it's all scrambled from what I spent, so now I'm overdrafted A LOT and they are tacking on fees because the overdraft has overdrafted me even more. I had a total of 10 overdrafts in one day! I would deposit some money when I got paid again and it would go all to them. Just for 37 cents! So basically I am a grunt of Chase Bank and I have had to work just to pay them.

I am going to open a credit union account and see if I can keep all my money from now on.

@squishyalt: I've always called them bank of opportunists but I think you're 1 upped me

Bastards of America, Bank of Opportunists

Let's not forget the hard times we're in. There are things that just aren't in your power that can put you in dire financial straights. What if your family only has one car and something went wrong with it that you were unable to fix? That could easily cost you several hundred to several thousand dollars. Hell, just a trip to the ER costs me nearly three-hundred dollars (with insurance) if I go during hours that a regular doctors office is open. That's several bills that could have been paid right there. Point being it's easy to point fingers when you yourself are living well, but don't assume that people are overdrafting just because they're not trying to balance their checkbooks or they're too lazy/stupid/whatever to get a better paying job.

Also it's pretty ridiculous that they say they clear the biggest check first to make sure it goes through. How is that convenient? If you're going to pay all or most of them anyways, why not bounce/overdraft one large payment instead of several smaller ones? The answer is because each one of those smaller ones makes the bank $35 profit which can easily add up to several hundred dollars.

I used to drink with a guy that was pretty high up in a larger bank in our area. He was pretty heavily against overdraft fees and named them "bankers crack."

"The bank managers love your overdraft fees. That's what lets them buy that really nice premium cocaine that you can't afford," he said.

Maybe, but so what? If there's a discrepancy you think the bank is going to trust your pen and paper ledger over their own information?

How can they? You, after all, deducted debts in the order they were made, not in the order most advantageous to the bank. As a result your ledger is automatically less accurate than the bank.

you can't ever make an argument against keeping your own record of how much money you put in and take out of the bank.

I can make a pretty good argument against the stated position above, which is that "keeping a ledger" is somehow a magic panacea against running up absurd fees.

It's not. The whole point of the fees is that they're nominally "punitive" measures for situations the bank puts you into without your notice. The fees exist to punish normal bank use.

I'm in the process now of getting an account and leaving US Bank.

CHASE, the WORST of all banks, likes to charge me a fee on my *free * checking account, then $35 for being overdrawn, then reversing the $9 fee that shouldn't have been there in the first place, which then causes my other transactions to be off, until i have to call every damned month to explain that they *KNOW* i have free checking so stop *ucking up my account. *as*holes.

Try getting them to tell you why they can post an ATM debit against your account in as little as 5 minutes but can't post a deposit for 24 hours ar an online payment for three days.

Aha! Common sense in the comments.

Very well said.

If you people were satisfied with a REASONABLE profit and your institutional shareholders were satisfied with a REASONABLE return on investments, maintaining a balanced checkbook might not require the services of a CPA or an advanced degree in mathematics.

Hey, everyone stop piling on Roerica. He/she's right. I've had minimum wage jobs before and still managed to live within my means and pay my bills on time, with one or two exceptions over the past 20 years. And if I've forgotten and had to pay a late charge, well, that was my fault.

I do think the banks' fees are usurious, but don't shoot Roerioca for pointing out an obvious preventative measure. I also don't care how high the interest rates are on my credit cards because I pay them off every month, and I have an emergency fund for, well, emergencies.

If you don't bounce checks you don't get fees.

What I'd like to see is banks "forgive", say, one incident every other year for those who truly make an accounting mistake.

You can probably guess what happened next...12 overdraft fees at $35 each for iTunes purchases since she used her debit card. The killer was that it took several days for the overdraft notices to show up in the mail. When my daughter checked her balance online everything looked reasonable since she had her paycheck and Suntrust was unwilling to reconsider ANY of the charges. We now use a local bank which will actually CALL you if you have a negative balance before hitting you with fees.

@Phillip M. Vector: I see your four fees and raise you to seven.

Bank of Opportunists pulled some gangsta shit on my account a couple of weeks ago, over the weekend I took money out of the account from 2 seperate non BoA ATMs and made a couple of small purchases. Monday some other stuff hit my account.

Well when BoA did their standard reorg they seperated the ATM fees and hit me with overdraft fees on those as well.

I swear I heard the CS agent giggling when i called to have them removed.

@Sandtiger:

Unlike what Ron Paul leads you to believe, the Government does not arbitrarily create money to pay for things.

Most of the time, the Treasury will issue bonds to pay for large projects. That's why the national debt as a percentage of GDP is projected to balloon.

He claimed that the majority of their customers preferred the way the they do it now and that they're just responding to public demand.

Bullcrap, pure and simple, but it's all I got after using a couple of phone numbers I got here.

This is the exact reason my fiance and I quit Wachovia. After a while, they got wise to when each of our respective "pay days" were and would begin holding all transactions the week leading up to that day only to clear all in a flurry overnight before adding the deposit resulting in several overdraft fees and curiously a positive balance (result of - withdrawals - fees + deposit = lower balance but still a positive balance).

I walked into the local branch and told them I would like to close my account, asked why I replied "I can't afford to bank with you."

I like ing orange direct for the reason that they cover any overdraft and simply charge interest on the negative balance until you make a deposit. Of the times, I had to utilize this, the interest was always covered by their interest paid back to me on my checking account balance for the month.

Also irritating, if you use a debit card at the store - instant removal of your money. If you make a return, it takes 3 days for the money to show into your account.

We bought an item at Lowe's, got to the car and found it was the wrong one. Went back in, returned it, got the right one. What happened? Two charges of $200 from my checking account, but the credit of $200 doesn't show up for days.

We deposited a check on a Saturday. Later that afternoon, we wrote a check for less than we deposited to buy some furniture.

Monday was a bank holiday. On Tuesday, National City processed the check we wrote for the furniture first, then gave us a bounce fee. Then they processed all of our small misc. debits, then gave us more bounce fees. Finally, they credited the check, but by that point the bounce fees had added up to over $200, even though at no point were we ever below zero. But with the bounce fees, we were far below zero, with additional fees threatened for being overdrawn.

I understand the risk of depositing a check and then writing a check the same day. The criminal activity, in my opinion, was the processing from the highest to lowest debits, and then processing deposits. The bank manager was like, "wow that really sucks, but there's nothing I can do." He gave the standard, "people wouldn't want their mortgage check to bounce" excuse.

We left for KeyBank, who has unfortunately been just as bad.

No joy. The bank debits all of the transactions on Saturday, but doesn't credit the funds transfer until Monday. Hello $230 in overdraft charges.

A K-9 officer arrived on the scene shortly after the robbery was reported but was there only as a responding officer. Bays said the dog could not be used to track the suspect in the cold, snowy weather Wednesday night

Well how about that? I now know when to rob a bank if I don't want dogs on my trail...

Recently had a good experience with Chase. Because of my forgetting to transfer funds from my wife's checking account, a number of items were pending on my checking account one evening (totaling @$300). I know that my account is set up to cover this by tagging me with a transfer charge and will transfer money to cover from a connected credit card. I still transfered the money expecting the hit the next day. But there wasn't one. Rather suprised!

I spent several hours on the phone and it took several attempts to get the CSR to understand it was the same payment being attempted multiple times. I finally got all but the original over draft removed.

@squishyalt: Perhaps people shouldn't be going to Starbucks if they have no money in there checking accounts.

Actually Check 21 legislation plays more of a part in collecting overdraft fees than reordering checks. For those that don't know, Check 21 allows for the extronic clearing of checks. Meaning a bank or a company can take an image of a check and send it electronically to be cleared versus snail mail as before. This allows for checks to be cleared same day versus 2 to 3 days like before. People aren't able to kite checks like before so no more buy groceries at Wal-Mart on Wednesday with no money in your account knowing you will get paid Friday. It also allows for envelope free ATM's. When you put a check in an envelope free ATM it takes an image of it and sends it electronically for clearning. The checks collected by the machine are destroyed.

Anyway, I agree with the post above in that if you want to avoid overdraft fees, don't write more checks then you have money for in your account.

People still write checks?

You might want to call your bank and ask to make sure...

Now I have overdraft protection, so when I overdraft it deducts it from either my savings or credit card account (I have it set up for credit card right now because my savings is with ING).

So you just get hit with a $10 transfer fee. And it's not per transactions, it's for all transactions you made on that day. So if you have 10 purchases totaling $30, you'll have $40 charged to your credit card or savings a day or 2 later, rather than the $350 you would have racked up in overdraft fees.

NOTES:
-Obviously this is not ideal, still.
-If you set it up from your credit card, it's considered a cash advance. Cash advance interest is much higher than your APR, and your company probably applies payments to the balance with the lowest APR first. If you have a large balance on your CC already this could be a problem.
-Ummm screw banks?

So here I am back to writing the checks again and spending a stamp.

When I brought up the different billing choices for customers the parrot at Bastards of America simply repeated what she has been told to say - everybody has to have their accounts handled the same way.

These practices should be banned under predatory lending laws. Because of these practices, a $3.60 hot chocolate at Starbucks has cost me $38.60. If making me a small loan of $3.60 and charging me $35.00 for the "convenience" WITHOUT MY CONSENT is not predatory lending, just what the hell is?

Predatory loans are capped at around 30%. This little drinks interest (call it what you like - but it is interest just the same) amounts to over 1,000% interest!

FVK ME! I'll loan out money all day long for 1000% interest in 3 days (the avg time it takes to charge me after they pay a larger check first and bounce my many fast food purchases).

Over a year, the annual interest rate (assuming that 3 days at 1000%+ is ony 3/365 of the annual loan) would actually be around 122,000%!! WTF!?

That's it! I quit. I'm starting a bank.

I'm just waiting for the next step, where they decide to pay my credit card automatically from the checking account, which will then go into a perpetual loop and result in me personally bailing out the bank.

Seriously, what the hell? And this happened to one of my friends, so it only makes you think what kind of shenanigans banks are up to.

Like I said before in Germany all you have to pay is interest on the amount below zero (used to be between 15 and 20% p.a.). That sucks and I'm always amazed how long you can have a nice amount of money in your account and the interest earned will be more than eaten up by just one day in the red.
If I would have to pay a overdraft fee in the range of $20 only once that would most probably eat up the interest I earned on my checking account in my entire life... the are crooks!

Unfortunately we are starting to see these pitfall fees in Germany too. Some Creditcard companies started and now banks seem to follow. Back in the days I guess people would have simply canceled business with a company that is trying to implement all kind of measures just to catch you with hefty fees.

You make all your deposits and withdrawals based directly off your ledger. Use the bank's information only to confirm that the changes have been made, whenever the hell that is. Exact dates are moot except when you're playing the float, or desperate to make a payment on the day you make a withdrawal.

If you're making deposits and withdrawals so close, take your check physically to a bank, deposit it in person, and get a receipt--or consider direct deposit, which has fewer delays. Make fewer insta-payments online. It's much easier paying all my bills by check and eating the stamp cost than managing even one online account anyway. Even without fraud working against you, you still have to wait for transactions to process. Ledgers help you time those transactions appropriately.

If you're forced to play the float, then you have no recourse and a ledger won't help much. It happens, that's life. Work harder, make budgeting sacrifices, and get over it. Still, keep your own balance.

You can badmouth the stupid overdraft protection service, or the banks' borderline criminal reording of transactions, but you can't ever make an argument against keeping your own record of how much money you put in and take out of the bank.

@crashfrog: Sure, grandpa, you could probably have avoided all of these problems back in 1940,

.giggle.

@failurate: Exactly. Why get one overdraft fee on one mortgage payment when you can let that one go through and charge you for all the others that didn't.

Also, it's not that they "refuse" to clear a transaction when your account is in the red. Your balance for the day is the last closing balance, say $200. If you buy something for $199, then buy something else for $2, your "available balance" is -$2. But when you go to buy that $2 item, all the computer knows when you swipe your card, is that your balance is $200. Hence you get stung for $35 for that $2 candy and soda binge.

Why on earth the computer cannot track realtime balances is beyond me. They claim it's because some transactions that are pending don't actually post, so it's less accurate. But if they don't it only INCREASES your available balance.

It's not quite a conspiracy, it's just convenient computing for your bank.

But more importantly: I like the idea of overdraft protection, but it definitely should be proportional to the charge. Otherwise, where's the protection? Instead of paying the bounced check fee to the creditor, you're paying it to the bank, but the fee still exists and is now also applied to debit and ATM transactions. You become more vulnerable with this service.

And OD-ing at an ATM, that's god-damned heresy!

I once overdrafted because of the resorting 4 fees because the charge I made on Friday didn't clear until monday at midnight.

Somehow, the computers don't like to work on the weekends.

In any other business relationship, if you are charged with a fee or other penalty, you are presented with a bill which you can review and then pay with whatever source of money you choose. I think it would be reasonable to force banks to follow the same strategy; at the very least, require banks to notify you of fees at least one week before withdrawing the money from your account. This would eliminate a lot of the compounding-fee problems we see going on.

What they meant to say was, "If we cash the big one first we can charge the NSF fee on it and all of the smaller charges. You know, double, triple, or even quadruple dip."

@Roclawzi

Well said (er, written)

You make a deposit at an ATM at 2:30 AM? You get the first 1000$ credited instantly.

Your automatic payment for your mortgage is the same day as your direct deposit? Guess what? Your direct deposit comes first, then your mortgage payment!

As far as what Tsubasa was talking about, we reverse any overdraft fees that were caused by fraud. Someone steal your debit card and make purchases that caused you to overdraft? We'll reverse the fees, and get you started on the way to disputing the charges and get your money back.

The biggest thing that I see is that people don't budget. The first question I ask when someone calls in to ask for a refund on overdraft fees is:

"Do you keep a check/transaction register?"

70% of them say no.

Should we reward people for not keeping track of their expenses?

At the very least, congress should pass legislation that allows a consumer to OPT out of this shady financial practice. Of course the banks are going to try and make it difficult to do that and will certainly lobby against any legislation pushing forth in this manner.

The acid kicked in while typing...

1) The bank is re-ordering deposits without telling you
2) The bank is delaying deposits without telling you
3) The bank cannot give you an accurate balance at any time

Sure, grandpa, you could probably have avoided all of these problems back in 1940, when you actually could rely on the bank to be using the same kind of accounting you were using to balance your checkbook.

Here in the now, with "creative accounting" fully deployed against your financial interests, a balanced checkbook is absolutely no guarantee that you actually have any money in your bank account, no matter how good your math skills might be.

@oneswellfoop: That's a great way to get people on your side... "Since you have all that extra money, and you're so responsible, how about you send me a check for a couple hundred dollars and demonstrate how wise and wonderful you are."

Look, my family came to this country with literally nothing. My great grandfather was an indentured servant who worked his way out of debt in Poland. He did all this only to end up living in the Great Depression. Instead of asking for handouts, why not act greatful for what you have. The ability to go to law school is an amazing opportunity, and you should be proud of that. Don't ask for sympathy, work for respect.

Since my deposit was after 3pm, it was credited on the next business day.
Since my ATM withdrawal was after 3pm (but before 6pm) it was debited on that business day.

The Overdrafts ate my deposit. Quicker than you can say "Banker needs a new pony!" Guess I should learn to balance my checking better, er RevMorose?

PS. The best part was there were three small checks went through, each less than $5, no more than $8 total. Each had their own double overdrafts. I think it was over $200 by the time the dust settled.

* Scenario 1:
Your paycheck (+) is deposited at 11:58PM. Your mortgage payment (-) goes through at midnight. Since these are separate calendar days, the bank can't reorder them. All is well.

* Scenario 2:
Your paycheck (+) is deposited at 11:58PM. Your mortgage payment (-) goes through at 11:59PM. Too bad for you, the bank has decided that you'd really rather the mortgage payment be processed first. Massive fees headed your way.

I really believe this is fraud.

This would suggest they actually read their Deposit Agreements (the booklet of fine print that comes with a checking account), which, in my experience working in the call center of a major bank, they rarely do.

An unexpected expense of, say $300, that is nothing to some people, can affect my budget for a month and a half to two months. Since you have all that extra money, and you're so responsible, how about you send me a check for a couple hundred dollars and demonstrate how wise and wonderful you are.

And yes, I budget harshly. My only un-necessary expenses are on slightly nicer ingredients to use cooking at home. I view those as important, since I'd rather spend a little less overall on quality and healthy food than a ton on health care resulting from the over consumption of processed foods.

Don't be such as a$$hat

There are many reasons why people keep the bill account small.

Pay the cable watter bla bla bla and let the big boy bounce (charge fee and then get cleard for payment)

*Because it isn't enough that I can prove when transactions actually took place, the average time it takes to process said transaction, and the almost clockwork fashion in which all my transactions get re-ordered.

/Yes, this practice has screwed me
/$36 at a time

Dont you know? The fed doesn't actually have to have a balance in their accounts to withdraw funds. They just edit their account and add a few zeros to the left of the decimal point and make sure they have a one all the way to the left each time.