Bank Turmoil

I will try to make this as descriptive as possible without spilling to much information. Now I have been checking my account for the past few days trying to gain insight on where I stand. Over the Christmas break from class I have earned 376.73 in total. Now all of my spending up to the point of today in which I got my next check has balanced out to an amount of 314.31, yet today I woke up to a surprise that I had been paid by my company 249.72 yet only had 81.05 as available.

Glancing over my account in hand I began to re-do the math and look at the dates several transactions were made. Many of which did not come through until the 19th and the 20th ( which is yesterday and today ). Yet I found another surprise in my account which is the little pesky thing called Overcharge. For some reason the bank felt the need to tack on four $36.00 overcharges on my account which all were marked on the date of yesterday which equated out to 144.00. If that wasn't enough of a shocker my available account balance went down by 10.00 for some reason, leaving me with 71.05 instead of the 81.05 I had before.

The question that I'm imposing on the members is if they banks can do this? Tack overcharges of that hefty amount on the same day? Even though in the past when I was out of town and hit my first overcharge it was only 8.00, yet this time I was charged the hefty amount of 144. Even then it wasn't charged every day, but rather only once per day for overcharge.

P.S. Not sure if this is in the right place or not so if it is not could a mod please move it to the right one .

[edit on 20-1-2010 by Gigantea Rosa]

I get $20 sting each time I have an un arranged overdraft. My ex used to work at the bank and could waive it.. unfortunately not any more!

Lucky, well I just printed out my bank statement and did all of the work I was doing on calculator on the paper and plan to stop by this morning before class. Don't really care if I'm late now, because that's 144 dollars that was supposed to go towards my school. In all honesty their should have been no reason to charge me overdraft of 144.00 when I should have had 14.15 left in my account anyway leading up to my next paycheck.

Currently trying to find a bank that doesn't do overcharges.

Banks do that all over the world , here in the UK the Banks were taken to courts over these 'unfair charges' , even though they were in the terms and conditions ( which most people don't read and the Banks LOVE that attitude), but here in the UK it went all the way to our new supreme court but was rejected in favour for the banks ( money talked there I think).

Best thing to is what I'm going to , try and get ALL your direct debits going out 3-4 days AFTER you get paid ( one of my direct debits tried to come out the day BEFORE I got paid even though I specified to the company AFTER, they still tried to take it out before and said to me, thats the way direct debits work, they start processing 2 days before the payment is due , - to get the ball rolling, and with automated systems running full speed to grab as much money as they can, its obvious the ones to suffer is you), and then take out the remainder of your cash, that way you shouldn't go overdrawn unintentionally and all of your bills are paid on time.
Banks label them as fair usage charges even though it was £35 (about $50) or so for a letter to tell you you've gone overdrawn and yet only pay you minimal when you've got a positve balance.
Trouble is with that is if your dependant on your overdraft then the banks have got you by the short and curlies.
Positive thing is if everyone does it then the banks know who's in charge.
Banks love to screw their customers over every chance they get, but since they had a beating with the courts they have redeuced this £35 charge to £5 charge every day your overdrawn, so if by your or their design you go overdrawn a week after your paid by a couple of quid of dollars then your liable for a charge of £70-80.
So work out your finances as best you cam cut down what you can, buy only what you have to, and take any spare cash out if you can.

Edit to add, and as for finding any bank that doesn't do any overcharges , erm, snowball in hells chance springs to mind.



[edit on 20/1/10 by DataWraith]

reply to post by Gigantea Rosa


Don't know if this is going to reach you in time...BUT
If the $10 dollar charge was for a monthly account fee and it caused your account to over draw you can get them to reverse the charges if you are REALLY NICE ABOUT IT
My friend is a bank manager and she has this problem all the time! Most people don't always remember that if they don't hold a certain balance or have a certain type of account they get charged a monthly fee. It overdraws them and she is stuck trying to get the paperwork through to reverse things.

The best way to do the account is to keep $40 on back up off the books. Every couple of months check your "actual" balance. I do it every week when possible.At one point I had built up over $400 dollars! Had no idea I had it to start with!

[edit on 20-1-2010 by xoxo stacie]

reply to post by xoxo stacie


Yep it reached me in time , I just decided to go to class late and sit here going through every last charge to figure out where I should have stood. Ah that's a good idea and I think I remember doing something similar with money sitting in my savings, but I did the thing of where I tried to move away from my parents help and pay for the college expenses so whatever left in savings was gone. .

Though I will be talking with one of the managers at the bank, hopefully I can get the one that signed me up for the account as he was nice and we both went to the same high school at least.

reply to post by DataWraith


Yeah I did a bit of looking into some banks, it's impossible for those without overdraft. Although their is the protection of it. Over here our overdraft per day is supposed to be $8. Yet I got charged 144 in the amount of one day somehow even though I had money still in my account. Though I never heard of this " having them come out after you get paid." Though it certainly makes me wonder what other options the banks may have other than what was offered from the start.

Thank you both of you for the help. Now to go to that bank!

Yup, banks can be predatory, I nearly lost 10% of a $10K account in five months for opening an unused checking account.

In 2008 I sold a car, and with $20K opened an online savings account in a (second) major bank for redundancy and rainy day purposes. A few months later I withdrew $10K for another car. A bank manager talked me into a no fee checking account which I told them I didn't need. I didn't check the statements since both accounts were no fee accounts, and I wasn't making transactions.

Five months later I finally got around to adding my wife to the $10K account, and found out that they had put me in a fully loaded account which required a minimum $100,000 balance, and they were charging me $100/month for not meeting the balance requirement. In five months my $10K account became $9K, an 'anti-savings' account.

Fortunately at the second branch the staff was helpful and were able to reverse the charges. Apparently the first branch should not have been able to open a $100K premium account with $10K. The second branch felt the manager was trying to meet a quota and had been bending the rules.

reply to post by Dbriefed


Wow, honestly starting to think that it's probably safer if you have your money stored somewhere at Home in a safe or something rather than in a bank. Though at least your charges were reversed which is good and you got your money back.

Though I'd like to know has anyone [ normal family person ] ever reached 100k? I'm just thankful that their are still nice people in the business world who can help us little folk out to.

Thankfully I got my money back just as well after walking into one of the "tellers" offices showing a stack of my 11 pages of finances with the math done on them as well. We both did some number crunching, while he viewed my files and I was following along on my paper. Thankfully he at least took three of the four off leaving me with 179 ( and some change ). I ended up borrowing some money from my mother ( which is rare ) so I'm glad that I can pay her back in full as I really hate borrowing from my parents especially since I started working and I became 20 ( almost 21 ).

Anyway aside from my story I guess this topic could be able anyone who has had bank problems whether current or in the past, perhaps other members could help as well.

[edit on 20-1-2010 by Gigantea Rosa]

reply to post by Gigantea Rosa


happend to me once, id gone overdrawn a couple of times but one day the bank decide to take £150 out on the same day i payed my rent.
due to the amount the bank took they left me -£40 overdrawn, then they expected me to pay a charge on that too.
they are robbing, stealing conniving ba5tards with no hearts.

Originally posted by EyeOnYou
reply to post by Gigantea Rosa

 

happend to me once, id gone overdrawn a couple of times but one day the bank decide to take £150 out on the same day i payed my rent.
due to the amount the bank took they left me -£40 overdrawn, then they expected me to pay a charge on that too.
they are robbing, stealing conniving ba5tards with no hearts.

Do you know why the bank took that much? I know they take some over here if you have a credit card activated and have used it ( I believe that is the case ). As I had to pay 20.00 at the start of the year, or something because of it. I'm wondering if that may have been included in the charge.

My Chase bank service fee jumped to $12. WTF? $12 for running an electronic checking account that pretty much requires no work on the bank's part? Yeah ok.

Originally posted by Zosynspiracy
My Chase bank service fee jumped to $12. WTF? $12 for running an electronic checking account that pretty much requires no work on the bank's part? Yeah ok.

It's a safe bet to say that all banks are probably going to up the ante at this point. I will admit I have not have been following the meltdown all to well in the past, but aren't some of the banks going a bit under now anyway? If so then it would make sense for them to increase, or they could just be hungry for money.