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TCama
March 10, 2010 9:24 AM
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So, just to recap, we have a large bank saying it IS possible to decline debit purchases! If I recall correctly, a number of banks were previously saying that that is simply impossible.

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ycnhgm
March 10, 2010 11:40 AM
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I don't recall them saying it was impossible. They kept saying it was not in the best interest of their customers. They did say, though, it was impossible to give the customer a choice then and there at the checkout and that is quite true considering the way how these things work.

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tinmanx
March 10, 2010 10:27 AM
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That's probably what they said, but they meant it makes them money.

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dwohio
March 10, 2010 9:25 AM
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The struggle that all these banks are having with this concept is of course they make tons and tons of money off the overdraft fees. So of course they have to figure out how to make money off of you in a different way before they cut off this \"service\".

I wonder if BofA clients saw their fees in other areas go up recently? Banks are not going to willingly give up a cash cow like this.

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Platypi {Redacted}
March 10, 2010 11:31 AM
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They are making up for the fees by foreclosing on houses that they don't own the mortgage for!

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pot_roast
March 10, 2010 11:18 AM
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I have. Monthly service fees went up if you don't have direct deposit, but I'm expecting that \"free checking\" accounts will be a thing of the past soon too.

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ander_bobo
March 10, 2010 9:27 AM
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I think this is great and while I am all for cardholder responsibilty, the banks haven't been playing by the rules for quite some time so it is about time there is regulation regarding overdraft fees. The people who have to deal with them are the ones who can afford it the least, it is a real shame. But once you've been burned by a $36 tube of toothpaste, you definitely make purchases more carefully.

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Conformist138
March 11, 2010 5:32 AM
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Try $360 when bank of america used to rearrange your pending transactions. they'd put them in size order instead of chronological order, putting the biggest ones in first. If you were gonna go over, it can (and usually will) trigger a chain reaction of fees. Why just get one fee off a $100 debit when you can get 10 off those little $1 and $5 purchases. When a customer thought \"damn, im a few short, but they'll put it through and my lights won't get shut off, so i'll just take the fee\", they could be treated to finding all other transactions they made BEFORE are getting fees despite having the money in the account.

This got them sued, and they still did it (and CSRs explained it was \"for the customer's benefit\") a year later. In the end, the offer was to refund 2 fees... i've gotten more than that in one day after the lawsuit started! so, it paid them to keep doing what they knew was wrong because the punishment was just a small piece of the profits.

sorry, BoA, but you could start farting fairy dust and it would still be way way too late. you are dead to me.

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jesusofcool
March 10, 2010 5:36 PM
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Yeah. This is a long overdue change, but I'm still glad BoA is doing it.

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ShinGetterPoPo
March 10, 2010 9:29 AM
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I've currently got a friend who gets charged 35 dollars per day per overdraft.
So if you go over on two things, that's 70 dollars. per day.

It's disgusting.

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ShinGetterPoPo
March 10, 2010 9:27 AM
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What we customers were saying wasn't necessarily \"don't let us spend money that we don't have\" we were saying \"don't charge us 35 dollars for a miscalculation\"

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kujospam
March 14, 2010 6:16 AM
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My biggest problem was them doing non time based billing. What they would do is put large dollar amounts on \"hold or pending\" status and wait to see if you make other purchases. Then if you do overdraft 3 days later. They then take that out and amazingly, they withdraw all the small purchases that day also. afterwards. They also do the opposite in waiting for small charges to clear hoping you will make a big payment, because it is easier to scam people. A friend of mine actually knew the programmer who decided to set it up that way. Needless to say the bank thanked him with a bonus many years ago.

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tape
March 10, 2010 10:08 PM
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actually, I would very much prefer to not be allowed to spend money I don't have.

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Admiral_John
March 10, 2010 9:29 AM
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I used to work at a regional bank in the IT department and while I wasn't involved in these kids of decisions I saw all sorts of memos about increasing OD fees specifically because they bring in so much money. This bank also specifically processed your debits daily so the largest was taken first; this was, according to communication to customers, to ensure your most important things were processed (mortgages, rent, etc) but internal memos indicated this was done strictly to increase fee income.

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ander_bobo
March 10, 2010 9:34 AM
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I never understood their reasoning for that, b/c I was told specifically by my bank that I have a $1000 overdraft cushion regardless so why the need to charge highest to least? It was obviously a ploy for them to get as many overdraft fees as possible, and I think it is totally despicable.

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nakkypoo
March 10, 2010 9:33 AM
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A few years ago I opened a business account with WF. For some reason they couldn't give me a savings account on the spot, so they gave me two checking accounts, and a few ATM cards.

Deposits at ATMs went to one account, while purchases were taken from the other.

I was fixing some pipes in my house one afternoon. Of course, I didn't know what I was doing, so I kept going to back to Home Depot for more crap. At the end of the day, Home Depot got less than $20 and my lovely bank levied over $150 in over-draft fees.

I made this arguement with them, unsuccessfully: \"if I didn't have $3.49 what makes you think I have $28?\"

Now I only pay cash.

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Rectilinear Propagation
March 10, 2010 9:41 AM
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\"What our customers kept telling me is ‘just don’t let me spend money that I don’t have,\" said Susan Faulkner...

And now that there is a law compelling us to do that we're going to go ahead and do it now so we can pretend we were listening to those customers.

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GMFish
March 10, 2010 9:44 AM
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This is a great idea until someone tries to pay with a debit card at a restaurant.

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Kingeryck
March 12, 2010 9:37 PM
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or pays 'credit' at the gas pump and they put the $1.00 authorization on there for that $40.00 gas purchase, then spend that $40.00 they needed for the gas.

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Blueskylaw
March 10, 2010 10:04 AM
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Why are you eating at a restaurant if you don't have the money?

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Rectilinear Propagation
March 10, 2010 10:52 AM
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Because you didn't know that you got double billed for that laptop you ordered or that your parents withdrew hundreds of dollars from your account.

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GMFish
March 10, 2010 10:06 AM
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I'm only feeling sorry for the restaurant, not the idiot who buys a meal without any money.

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GMFish
March 10, 2010 10:07 AM
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After thinking about it a bit, if this catches on, I'd guess that restaurants will simply stop accepting debit cards. I know I would.

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dolemite
March 10, 2010 10:31 AM
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Er...credit cards get declined all the time, but there isn't a mad rush to ban credit cards anywhere. Why would this be *any* different? No, this is a good idea. If your balance in the bank is hovering around zero or you aren't keeping track of your automatic payments, you don't need to be eating out.

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GMFish
March 10, 2010 11:16 AM
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\"credit cards get declined all the time\"

First, I worked in retail for several years and I never had a circumstance where a credit card was declined, so I doubt if it happens \"all the time.\" Sure it happens, but not as often as you claim.

Second, considering the vast number of complaints of overdraft charges relating to debit cards I'd have to guess that people are using their debit cards with insufficient funds quite often.

Third, plenty of business decline taking personal checks for this very reason. The retailer has no idea a priori whether there is enough money in his/her checking account.

Because of overdraft fees, however, retailers could accept debit cards knowing they'd get their money whether there were sufficient funds or not. However, now that this has changed, they might start treating debit cards the same way they treat personal checks.

\"No, this is a good idea\"

I completely agree. Well, not completely, I think it's a great idea.

\"If your balance in the bank is hovering around zero or you aren't keeping track of your automatic payments, you don't need to be eating out.\"

Once again, I completely agree. And as I already said, I'm not concerned about the person buying the lunch, I'm concerned about the restaurant being screwed.

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Friday7261965
March 10, 2010 2:33 PM
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Mot businesses have stopped taking checks due to debit cards. When they did take checks, they could pay to have them \"guaranteed\". The check was paid no matter what, and a third party collected if there was an over draft.

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Chmeeee
March 10, 2010 1:02 PM
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The debit card would be declined on the spot, thus no different from a credit card that's over limit. Waiter comes back, asks for a different form of payment.

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psm321
March 10, 2010 12:38 PM
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Umm, with a debit card it would be declined on the spot, and thus another payment method demanded, versus a NSF check that would only be discovered later

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AnonymousCoward
March 10, 2010 12:36 PM
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Apparently credit cards only get declined when I'm next in line at the supermarket.

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pot_roast
March 10, 2010 11:20 AM
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\"First, I worked in retail for several years and I never had a circumstance where a credit card was declined, so I doubt if it happens \"all the time.\"\"

I worked part time for an airline, and it happened almost DAILY. And then I would get yelled at about the baggage fees that the passenger now could not afford.

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Xeos
March 10, 2010 3:35 PM
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A merchant contract for Visa and Mastercard includes assurances that in the case of failure to pay that you will get the money and the issuing bank/company will be responsible for collections.

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wonderkitty
March 10, 2010 9:47 AM
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You'll still get the Golden Poo, BoA, because this doesn't even begin to make up for the rest of your suckage. And I just bet customers are being encouraged to run the debit cards as credits.

Geez, how are the CEOs going to afford their lavishes houses and vacations now? Where's it gonna come from? No CEO deserves less than the BEST, you know.

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zt
March 10, 2010 9:52 AM
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While I think the way these overdraft fees were handled was not appropriate, I feel that it is ultimately incumbent upon the consumers to understand how their cards work and to use their cards responsibly. I'm afraid that it's going to be the responsible people who end up paying for these changes to protect the irresponsible people.

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bror
March 11, 2010 8:30 AM
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No, it used to be the irresponsible people that paid for the responsible peoples free checking and reward points. Change irresponsible to unemployed/poor and responsible to have more than enough money, and that sentence reads a bit different...

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ospreyguy
March 10, 2010 9:52 AM
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B of A just moved up one notch on the (patent pending) Ospreyguy Respectometer. Too bad they are still like -34639 on a scale of 10.

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Rectilinear Propagation
March 10, 2010 11:31 AM
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Why should the notch move at all? They're only doing this because the law is about to force it on them.

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ospreyguy
March 12, 2010 2:59 PM
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If you do everything a reasonable person should/would you are at 0 on the scale. So this just gets them closer to 0.

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Scuba Steve
March 10, 2010 9:53 AM
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\"\"What our customers kept telling me is ‘just don’t let me spend money that I don’t have,\" said Susan Faulkner, the bank’s deposit and card product executive, told the New York Times.\"

And what finally got them to change it, cause they were raking in billions, was the government passing a law.


Eat a bag of donuts, Susan Faulkner. The whole bag.

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OmnipotentMLE
March 10, 2010 2:44 PM
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great for realizing it- now can you give me my overdraft fees back?

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DoubleEcho
March 10, 2010 10:10 AM
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And not even the good donuts either. Make her eat the stale, dry donuts with no filling or icing.

And no milk for her either, only warm tap water!

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Bohemian
March 10, 2010 9:53 AM
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BoA will now levy a NSF fee for declining your transactions.

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1 replies
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Rectilinear Propagation
March 10, 2010 11:09 AM
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True. Hopefully the new law will prevent them from reordering the transactions in order to do multiple NSFs like they did with overdraft fees.

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woogychuck
March 10, 2010 9:56 AM
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As a BoA customer, I say hells yes to this! The only reason I use BoA is because they've got some great online tools, but I've had lots of issues with their crazy overdraft policies.

A few months ago, somebody cashed a 2 month old check I forgotten about and I got to pay $35 overdraft fees on 5 different transactions that were all less than $10.

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Neilbert
March 10, 2010 1:44 PM
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Okay, so here's a question that I haven't seen answered.

BofA seems to post checks to the account at the end of the day. Let's say I have $100 in my account. I go out on Monday and write a check for $200. End of day Monday, my available balance is still $100. Tuesday, I go out in the morning and use my debit card for $75. The debit clears because I still have $100. Then the check shows up - and now I'm at -$175.

Under BofA's current system, the payments would get processed and I would get two overdraft fees - one for the check and one for the debit card transaction (because they process large to small). Can anyone say what would happen under the new system?

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PsiCop
March 10, 2010 10:10 AM
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I'm very happy to hear this as a BoA customer, especially since I was hit with this problem about a year ago, when a large debit-card transaction was duplicated, sending me into \"negative territory\" without my having known it. I managed to get the whole thing straightened out -- and BoA refunded my overdraft/NSF fees -- but it was annoying nonetheless. Had one of my purchases been declined at time of sale, I'd have known about the problem one day earlier.

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OmnipotentMLE
March 10, 2010 2:48 PM
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except when you report the problem, it takes 3 business days to clear. Meanwhile, you're left with no money- thanks BOA

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Gnort
March 10, 2010 10:12 AM
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This is the way it has always been by default (as far as I know) in Canada. I assume this is due to our laws, since our banks are no less evil.

I have a no fees bank account that I use for spending that I keep a minimum amount in...I have run low several times at the end of the month and been glad it just rejects the transaction so I can use my other bank card.

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slyabney
March 10, 2010 10:15 AM
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I've yet to have an overdraft with my BOA account because I keep careful track of spending however, I'd like for them to still stop stacking my purchases from biggest $$$ to lowest $$$ (especially noteable over a weekend where everything then processes on Monday/Tuesday). I'd like things in the order I bought them so it's easier to track against my registery.

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JennaBelle
March 11, 2010 10:08 AM
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That's exactly my problem. Nothing clears in a reasonable amount of time with my bank. While I write the money down and out of my account the day I spend it, it might not clear for a week or two. Throw in one humanly mistake (oops, my math was off a few cents or someone ran my card twice without me knowing) and you're in debt like woah. I do my very best to keep up with my register on a daily basis, but I'm human and if I overdraft with my bank and don't check into online banking every single day, I won't know for a few days until that overdraft letter shows up in the MAIL. By then I'm out a LOT of money. It's just sucky.

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nbs2
March 10, 2010 10:16 AM
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And now we await complaints that a user went to buy a Barbie for her kid, and the purchase was declined because of lack of funds, when they were totally willing to eat the OD fee this one time.

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Alter_ego
March 10, 2010 11:00 AM
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Maybe she should just buy the black Barbie.

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AllanG54
March 10, 2010 10:31 AM
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I don't use debit cards because I'd rather use the float on my credit cards but I can see where as great as this is, it might cause problems for some people who actually have money in their accounts but have holds on funds from merchants putting through additional charges that don't end up being paid such as hotels or gas stations.

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Madge Gristle
March 10, 2010 10:34 AM
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Was I the only one curious as to the back story of the picture? (thanks for the link to the photographer for that)

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Rectilinear Propagation
March 10, 2010 11:03 AM
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Well I figured it was one of those exploding packet things. I didn't realize that it was from a real robbery and that it was a BoA that was robbed.

Appropriate photo is appropriate.

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Jbondkicks
March 10, 2010 10:36 AM
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Hey, at least my buddies over at Chase have a less than $5 rule. They don't charge you $34 unless you overdraft by more than $5 (or is it $5 or more?). Well, at least you don't get charged $34 for overdrafting on a pack of gum.

Why doesn't BoA and all of the banks just make overdrafting on debit card purchases an opt out thing? By default it let's you overdraft and charges you $34 bucks, but you can call or go online and switch it so you get declined. They'd have plenty of people too lazy to switch (their own fault) and plenty that would rather overdraft than decline.

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Zanorfes
March 10, 2010 11:24 AM
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Bank of America is only trying to draw attention away from the fact that it forecloses on the wrong houses and kidnaps parrots. I'm not fooled.

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bosozoku
March 10, 2010 11:56 AM
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I'm going to love it when Mr. Customer calls in to say he's stranded at a gas station 300 miles from home and his card keeps getting declined. In this situation, Mr. Customer would have been more than happy to temporarily overdraft his account so he can get home.

Not to mention all of the other dire situations customers get themselves into that they need to overdraft their account intentionally.

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Postal
March 10, 2010 12:43 PM
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Mr. Customer shouldn't wander so far from home without some cash. Being in the desert southwest, I also keep a case of water and a ham radio in my vehicle.

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kb01
March 10, 2010 12:21 PM
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Isn't the easiest solution to the problem just to keep a registry of all transactions so you don't overdraft? A small notebook is very cheap and can avoid all of these problems regardless of BoA's policies.

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morlo
March 10, 2010 12:28 PM
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It's impossible to know precisely when deposits will post to your account.

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Friday7261965
March 10, 2010 2:39 PM
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No it isn't. Consider all withdrawl transactions as immediate. If you haver automated payments those should come out on the same day every month, unless it is a holiday or weekend. Find out what the policy on those is. A direct deposit paycheck will generally hit a major bank before the bank opens. I have had nearly 30 years of balancing a checkbook, and I know what I have in my account. The only time I ever had an issue was a bad check received from someone else that took a month to be discovered. BTW, that was a credit union that took that long to figure out the error, but they did waive the fees for me.

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oneandone
March 11, 2010 4:06 PM
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You stated the problem yourself: \"a direct deposit paycheck will generally hit a major bank before the bank opens\" - the key is generally and that it doesn't happen in a predictable way 100% of the time. And what if you're depositing a paper check? People still do that, and those seem to get held up for whatever amount of time the bank wants.

It's interesting that morlo's very clear and legitimate point about how varying deposit posting times can wreck your personal accounting system is completely ignored by people who think more personal responsibility is all that's needed. Yes, I can keep a check register and assume that all withdrawals are deducted instantly from my balance - but there's nothing I can do, other than constantly checking online and hoping the bank updates my account accurately - to make sure deposits actually happen when they're supposed to.

No matter how responsible you are, if the other party keeps mucking around with part of the equation, your math at some point is going to mess up.

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kb01
March 10, 2010 12:39 PM
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But if you treat all debit card usage like checks that are applied immediately, you can avoid those problems. It's just important to verify that paycheck direct deposits are credited prior to spending the money.

A registry of all transactions can eliminate 99% of these problems.

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Moosenogger
March 10, 2010 12:39 PM
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It's about damn time. I'd rather have it declined and go home with my tail between my legs than have to pay the outrageous fees the bank charges.

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COBBCITY
March 10, 2010 4:50 PM
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\"What our customers kept telling me is ‘just don’t let me spend money that I don’t have.\"

Um, according to Ms. Faulkner, BofA just now discovered that customer want to be told BEFORE they overdraft and given the opportunity to say not instead of incur a $35 fee? She is surprised by that news? Really??

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Kingeryck
March 12, 2010 9:34 PM
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What idiots will not understand is this does not mean you can just go out and swipe your card without balancing your account. If a check posts after your card was approved or the amount changes, say if you pumped gas as 'credit' and they do the $1.00 authorization for your $30.00 gas purchase you WILL overdraw.

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