BOA's Newest Scam

[sisterfunkhaus]

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr. BOA has a new scam going on to take money from their unvalued customers. They charge overdraft fees when you don't even overdraw. Say you make a deposit of $2500 and it goes on at midnight. You have a balance of $100 and buy gas, fast food, and groceries and go over by $50. Your transactions clear after the deposits posts. The bank does NOT have to pay ANY transactions on your behalf. They ALL come out of the account after your deposit posts at midnight. It even shows that there was no overdraft on your account on the online banking and that the funds were there to pay the transactions. Yet they still charge you $50 in overdraft fees. How does this happen??

Good question, if the money isn't in the account when you swipe your card, despite the fact that you made a deposit, they ding you an overdraft fee. Even though the charge hasn't cleared, even though it is paid with YOUR money when it does clear, ding ding, $25.00 per transaction. So even though you don't overdraft and the money is clearly there to pay the transaction, they charge you.

This happened to me. I called them and they said they changed their policy and it was in a pamphlet in the March statement. I checked. No pamphlet in March or April. They refunded my fees, but when BK is done, I am changing over to a more customer friendly bank. I have NEVER overdrawn my account EVER despite financial problems. I pride myself on knowing the rules and making sure I do things right when it comes to my bank account. They just changed the rules on me and didn't tell me.

[Dirk Squarejaw]

I read about stuff like this and I'm glad I'm with a small, local bank that doesn't seem to pull this sort of shenanigans.

[DisneyGirl]

Thanks for the info on BOA. I hate them so much but DH has an account through them that he uses from time to time. I'm glad they refunded your fees and I hope you can find a better bank soon!!

[magyar123]

It's not only BOA - all banks do that. They process debits (checks, etc.) before they process deposits, even automatic deposits.

[TX Bluebonnet]

It's my bank's policy to process pending deposits before pending debit transactions. Same thing with the bank I used in another city before I moved.

[Cali]

The same for me.

It's my bank's policy to process pending deposits before pending debit transactions. Same thing with the bank I used in another city before I moved.

[sisterfunkhaus]

It's not only BOA - all banks do that. They process debits (checks, etc.) before they process deposits, even automatic deposits.

Oh they process the deposit first then the transaction. That is the weird part. when you look at your online activity, the deposit is applied first, then the transaction goes through. No actual overdraft is shown. All you see are fees tacked to your account.It shows clearly that it was paid with the deposit. They charge you the money for not having the funds in there when the transaction is initially posted, before it goes through. So there I was looking at my account with overdraft fees and no actual overdraft. I know it's a weird concept to grasp. Basically they are charging you an overdraft fee even though they apply the deposit first and the transaction clears fine. They are charging for them having to do nothing. It's a, "We're not sure if you will have the money to cover it so we are charging you just b/c there is a possibility that you might not." fee.

[CindyLou]

Wells Fargo's system does the same thing, but they have always refunded the fees. (has happened to me 4 or 5 times in the last 3 years.

[sisterfunkhaus]

Today, b/c of their bogus overdraft fees on my non-overdrafted account, several things bounced. I had 175 dollars in fees this time. They took them off b/c we made a large deposit yesterday and he recognized that w/o the overdraft fees, the transactions would have cleared. He was actually miffed at the situation and seemed to feel that it was crappy as well.