I just wanted to take a moment to point out to all those folks who bank at The insolvent bank........Bank of America, of a policy they have aggressively started to pursue. It goes something like this: The days of depositing money the same day you debit or have checks clearing to cover those items are over. And Bank of America is aggressively pursuing $35 fees per occurrence.
for example......lets say you have went to the store and spent $500 on groceries (not hard to do nowadays) and after writing your electronically approved check at the store you go to the bank and make a deposit for $1000 to cover that check. At the time you wrote the check you only had $100 in your account, but you deposit on the same day. Deposits come first right......wrong!!! Apparently BOA has figured out a way to penalize us so that we can no longer take advantage of the time it takes them to process the transactions. Because the check was written at say 10 oclock and then you make the deposit at 11 oclock they consider you overdrawn........even though they actually do not pay out the money for 48 to 72 hours after you made your deposit.
Whats even worse is they don't treat deposits like they do withdrawals. Deposits get there when they process them but debits are automatically time stamped and even though it takes sometimes 48 hours to process a debit transaction it counts against you the second you make the transaction. Understand if it takes BOA 48 hours to process a debit and actually pay out the money .....why should you have to pay a fee they haven't paid anybody anything until several days after your deposit is actually sitting there.
What a shame!!!!
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deposit before spending seems simple enough.
i bank at TD bank tho. used to be commerce.2socks likes this. -
I use money orders, have a checking account, just never use it because the Banksters do try and chisel every dime they can out of the sucke...err..."Customers"...
I've yet to have a MO bounce on me. -
I here ya......simple enough. Although I have about $30,000 in BOA I keep it in a interest account to maximize the money and transfer it when I need it. That's how I found out about the deal. I transferred $2000 to my checking account because I went online and saw my balance was like $230. I knew I had some debits coming in the next day. Sure enough the next day my balance was $2230. The debits came through and cleared the account, no big deal. When I went on the web site the next day I had been charged $35.00 x's 8 transactions. At first I didn't realize what was happening and went to the bank to cancel my debit card because I thought someone had got the number. That's when I found out about the time stamping. They charged me $35 for a freaking $8 order at Mcdonalds. I never asked them to approve transactions when money wasn't in the account. I would assume they would be declined............no...........why do that when you can charge your customer $240.00 ........of course the transactions were approved out of courtesy because i was such a valued customer......what a crock of sh*t. Of course when I asked the Manager of the branch why deposits were treated differently then debits he could not supply me with an answer other then give me the 1 800 number to customer no service.
Of course after my lesson I asked for the money to be refunded since really they never paid anyone anything untill 24 hours after my deposit cleared so technically I didn't overdraft ....only on the clock I did. He refused and I withdrew my $30,000........he just shook his head as I walked out with CASH....
I thought it very interesting that they treat debits like this but deposits remain like they used to be treated next business day.........another crock of sh*t -
I learned that the hard way 2socks, I bought some stuff via Ebay and used the checking acct attached to paypal, I was unsure of the money I had in the account...but it had a credit card backup...no worries right?
Nope, the bank paid the draft and billed me 35 bucks when I thought the CC would cover any shortage. -
In my opinion its bull because technically you don't overdraft until the bank pays out and it usually takes 2 to 3 days for that to occur. Just the banks taking advantage of us IMO. Charging me $35 for my #3 combo at Micky D's is over the top
JMO -
Until about a year ago as long as you made a deposit the same business day it covered whatever you had coming in. Not anymore.
It takes the bank 24-72 hours to process your debits, weather they are a check or debit card. My whole point is why should we have to pay a fee if we haven't actually overdrawn. We only overdraw when the bank actually transfers the money which is well after you made your deposit. -
Thanks for the heads up 2socks!!:up::up: Why am I not surprised when they reported 1st quarter earnings of 4.8 BILLION they really needed that fed money, yea right!:pity:
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I have checking account in Bank of America. What I do is:
I deposit money in bank, go to home and check online if money is there, if yes then spend the money... Simple
I have never been charged for late fees, overdrawn fees, or any kind of fees....
You getting slapped with 8 $35 fees or fines are your fault due to careless budgeting. I know because I am an accountant and I find that most people who got slapped with the fees are careless...
You need to learn to keep track of every cent and know exactly how much you have down to exact cent at the moment. If you dont know exact how much you have then it is foolishness to spend.Last edited: May 2, 2009 -
You could always just use a credit card instead of a debit card and just pay it off each month. Then you avoid having to worry how much is in your checking account and no late fees.
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How is it that you miss the point here. It's not that I mismanaged what I had it's that they charge a fee for doing what????? They HAVE NOT paid out any money on my behalf that I didn't have.
1. I have about $30,000 in 2 other accounts collecting interest
2. The balance on the account never went negative because it takes them a minimum of 24 and up to 72 hours to actually pay out anything on my behalf.
3. I made a transfer of funds from the interest accounts to the checking account to cover those funds 36 hours before they charged me the fees.
My company's gross receipts last year were 1.8 million so I think I am able to manage money pretty well. So "learning" to manage money is not the point:wink2: -
1. It doesnt mater how much you have in another accounts. The expenses are coming out of one specific account so that account's balance is important.
2. Debit and most expenses are debited right away, the bank may pay 24 hours later but the money is taken from your account right away.
3. Transfers sometimes take up to 3 days to clear. Looking at your account in website will tell you when the deposit are cleared. I dont spend the money until the deposit is cleared, that means it doesnt have pending before the amount you are transferring or depositing.
My first and last fee was about 13 years ago, I deposited a check and went out to spend the money I just deposited. After that fee, I always made sure that the deposit are final before spending the money. It is how the banks work and there is nothing we can do but to be careful so they dont have excuses to slap us with those awful fees.
Most people are having problems with this because they have automatic payments... You have to think this : Why are banks offering this service at no charge? Because people often forget to make sure that money is in before the automatic payment hit the account causing the fees. I often encourage my customers to stop using the automatic paymets. They still can receive bills online and pay the bills online using bank's electronic payments but people can make sure the money is in before making payments while automatic payments dont. -
I'm sorry but this isn't a B of A thing nor an act of desperation. banking is highly regulated and this practice that you talk about was a new law that went into effect a while ago. It effects all banks.
If I remember the specific name of the law I will find it for you, but this was something that came from Congress. It's law (eliminated the spread we were used to)
EDIT: Found it. It's the Check 21 Law. Introduced in 2004 or so.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/truncation/
Your checks can clear almost instantly, but it doesn't force the bank to allow your funds to be available immediately.2socks likes this. -
i know wamu and wachovia do this too. i learned my lesson a few years ago and i no longer overdraw from my account.
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BofA has been pissing me off lately.
My bro got screwed the other day because he thought that there was an alert thing set up on his account but he went below 0 by buying a few coffees etc over the course of a couple days, so all in all he was about 8 dollars negative, but ended up getting about 7 35 dollar late fees even though I transferred money into his account before the late fees happened.
now, its easy to say it's his fault, and it is, because he should pay more attention to his account. but seems like sort of a dic* move on the banks part to not have some sort of system in place to prevent that from happening, especially on small transactions. -
Its simple actually. They are purposely generating fees. This could happen to anyone, which is why I posted this thread. I remember a time when you didn't have money and they refused the transaction. A bank employee told me that actually there is a unwritten rule that BOA and other banks have put in place that if your overdraw is less then $12 they will actually let it go thru whether money is in the account or not because the ratio of overdraft to fee generated is at a certain portion of a algorithm that the bank deems a acceptable risk of being reimbursed. So what I am telling you is the bank actually has figured out what amount to "loan" you when you over draft that they have an almost 100% return of their money plus a fee of $35.00.
What this amounts to is LOAN SHARKING at 300% and is bullsh*t. I actually went to BOA and asked them to never again approve a transaction that over drafts my account. The answer was "they can't". They actually have no way to attach that to someones account. They have purposely eliminated that possibility to generate fees. They can attach it to a savings account or something but that's it.
They will continue to approve loan sharking loans to me as long as I fit into the algorithm. I was lucky I had them give me my money in cash(over 30,000) and went to my local credit union. They were shocked when I walked in with 30G's to deposit........it was actually funny the red carpet treatment came out and all my accounts, online banking .....everything is free
Man it's good to be away from Bank of America