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The pain overdraft fees cause poor people is truly hard to comprehend unless you've been there. It's incredibly evil. You've got $16 left for food and then the
by staunch 11y ago
The pain overdraft fees cause poor people is truly hard to comprehend unless you've been there. It's incredibly evil.
You've got $16 left for food and then then the Flickr account you forgot to cancel gets charged to your account, putting your balance at -$9. Now you have to pay $35/day until you get enough money to cover the overdraft fees. You end up paying $100+ for a $9 forced loan.
The bank could have just declined the charge and let you deal with it, but even though you have overdraft "protection" turned off, they've decided to classify this transaction as an on-going contractual relationship, letting the charge through so as not to "inconvenience" you. Bankers are inventive at skirting the law.
They know exactly what they're doing. They're rich bankers robbing poor people.
I won't be satisified until Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and all these other evil American banks pay back every single dime to their victims.
Until then, no one should even consider helping these evil banks when there are good ones available. USAA is great.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mkaziz 11y agoUSAA - The United Services Automobile Association?
- nkozyra 11y agohttps://www.usaa.com/ https://www.usaa.com/
- artursapek 11y agoI highly recommend USAA for checking/savings accounts. Been with them for 5 years or so.
- MBCook 11y agoI've been with them a lot longer, my parents decades. Never had a problem with them.
- Touche 11y ago> They know exactly what they're doing. They're rich bankers robbing poor people. I can understand thinking that the "correct" thing to do here is to simply not allow a transaction when there aren't sufficient funds, but this language goes overboard. It's not robbing a person because they were unable to keep track of how much money they own and adjust accordingly.
- cookingrobot 11y agoIt's a not consensual extraordinarily high interest loan. Robbery is a fine label to use for that.
- Touche 11y agoIt's absolutely consensual; it only happens if you overdraw your account.
- cookingrobot 11y agoThey're not asking for a loan, they're asking to withdraw their own money that they put in the bank. The bank deliberately chooses to turn this into a loan if they accidentally ask for more than is currently there.
- fredkbloggs 11y agoLet's talk about the word "accidentally". Suppose I drive to a bar, have three beers, and drive home. I don't bother to check my BAC; I just assume I'm below the legal limit and can drive safely. On the way, I accidentally run over a budding young Progressivist on the street, who then dies. When the sheriff shows up, he finds that my BAC is 0.09 -- just over the limit! Surely, you will agree that any penalty I am assessed for this should be minimal. After all, I did not intend to kill anyone. I did not think I was drunk. Sure, I didn't bother to check, or to assume the worst and take a couple hours' break before driving. But it was an accident. I didn't know that I was over the limit. Maybe I hadn't even read the law, and didn't know what the limit was, or what the penalties would be for exceeding it. Obviously, any big, mean, nasty "justice" system that would impose a heavy penalty on me for this act is evil and unethical. Right?
- djloche 11y agoI wish USAA would open their net a little bit to extended families. My brother is a doctor in the US Navy, but that supposedly wasn't 'close' enough of a family relation for me to qualify to do business with them.
- mbrameld 11y agoWhy do you think it should be?
- nulltype 11y agoI guess the counter question is why is USAA only available to military members?
- tsotha 11y agoUSAA isn't a bank, it's a credit union. It's "field of membership" is uniformed military and their families.
- a3n 11y agoActually, USAA is a bank. At least the bank part of them is a bank. They're also an insurance company, an investment company, and a few other things. But the banking part is a bank. From their site's front page: USAA means United Services Automobile Association and its insurance, banking, investment and other companies. Banks Member FDIC. https://www.usaa.com https://www.usaa.com Notice the FDIC. Credit unions are not insured via FDIC, they use NCUA. http://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/fdic-versus-ncua-insurance/ http://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/fdic-versus-ncua-insur...
- nulltype 11y agoCan anyone recommend a credit union as good as USAA that accepts people unaffiliated with the military?
- 11y ago
- ssimpson 11y agoUSAA also batches their debts and payments differently than other banks, to help their members minimizes any fees incurred. Their customer service saying is "assume positive intent" and they have amazing service. I will probably be a customer for life.
- tlrobinson 11y agoFor awhile Bank of America did the exact opposite, ordering transactions each day from largest to smallest to maximize the number of overdraft fees. Fortunately that truly evil practice was put to an end when they lost a $410 million class action lawsuit.
- thrownaway2424 11y agoI worked at a company that developed hardware (check scanning) and software for banks. _Every_ bank wanted the feature that batches transactions on accounts from largest to smallest, to maximize the overdraft fees. That was in 1994 so it has been going on for a long time.
- a3n 11y agoThe other day I took a picture of a check that I received, with their phone app. They credited the check to my account immediately. Not "pending," it was in there with no unusual note. I assume it would have been on me in some way if the check bounced, but still. If you're eligible, you should join USAA.
- MichaelGG 11y agoHah and with Wells Fargo, a check from one account to another will take a day or two. Online transfers take up to three.
- guac 11y agoThat's standard practice with USAA. My first few checks had a pending status but after that (100s of checks later) they all posted immediately. Same thing happened when I signed up my wife. It's a selling point of USAA. My paycheck also posts immediately, I get "paid" Thursday while everyone else I work with gets it Friday.
- mikekchar 11y agoThere are a couple of times in my life when I was quite poor (for someone living in a G8 country...) The biggest thing I learned was to use cash. Cash is awesome because you can see how much you have and you can't spend more than you have. Even now that I am relatively well off, I have my habitual routine of getting cash at the beginning of the week and spending only that for the week. In fact, I make sure that there is always a bit left over at the end of the week (because there are always surprises). The thing that is frustrating for me in western countries is that using cash is becoming more and more difficult. The last time I tried to rent a room at a hotel in Canada, they would not accept cash -- credit card only. In the UK, I used to use my Oyster card (a pre-paid travel card for public transit in London). I could basically use it like cash. You put in whatever money you want at the beginning of the week and then you can use it without worrying about over spending. If you ever travel in London, be aware that the payment system is buggy as hell and they will over charge you badly. With the Oyster card it's great because I can notice that my balance is lower than it should be, go online and get a refund (seriously ... it happened at least 3 times a week for me!!!) But now they are pushing using your bank card as a payment mechanism. They have access to all of your money and you have many less ways of detecting when they have overdrawn (or penalized you for the failure of their equipment to register your badging in). Again... these companies know exactly what they are doing. As an aside... I often wonder what happened to the laws about accepting legal tender. There are a number of times that I've been refused service because I wanted to pay cash (hotels and car rentals being the biggest culprits). Is this actually legal?
- pyre 11y ago> The last time I tried to rent a room at a hotel in Canada, they would not accept cash -- credit card only. This has more to do with the hotel's liability. If you steal from the hotel or damage the room, they will apply those extra charges to your credit card. Even if your credit can't cover the costs, your verified credit card information tells them that you didn't provide a false name, and they have someone to chase after to recoup the charges.
- mikekchar 11y agoI live in Japan now. In Japan they take a photocopy of some ID containing your address for that purpose. My understanding is that the reason hotels want a credit card is that they pre-charge it with a deposit and then refund it when they check the room. You never see the pre-charge transactions so you don't know about it. I have successfully negotiated with some hotels to take cash by offering them a cash deposit. Some hotels refuse to do it, though. I don't even have a credit card any more (mostly out of choice, but also because Japanese banks tend not to give credit cards to non-permanent residents), so the next time I travel in the west (soon) is going to be an adventure...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- colanderman 11y agoOh it's better. I've seen a poster on a commercial bank in the US which advertised a usurious loan (I forget the exact rate but it was up there with pay-day loans) that was only in Spanish while all its other products were advertised in English.
- rokhayakebe 11y agoThe bank could have just declined the charge and let you deal with it Wells Fargo will charge you $35 even if they decline the charge. So they don't pay because you don't have enough money, and on top of that they charge you for not paying.
- ams6110 11y agoNever never never bank with the big national banks like Chase, BoA, etc. Find a local bank or credit union, they are generally much more reasonable with their fees and penalties and often have free overdraft privileges (with some caveats -- understand those!). Never set up automatic payments directly from your bank account. Pay your bills manually, once or twice a month whatever fits best with your cash flow.
- joe5150 11y agoThere are also good banks that, unlike USAA, most people can actually join with minimum hassle. CapOne360 and Ally have both done me very well, no connections needed.
- omonra 11y agoI mostly agree with you (99%) except the part about 'Rich bankers robbing poor people'. The bankers devising this are not rich - they are very much middle class MBAs who are struggling to meet ends meet, what with high cost of property in good school districts, etc. It the same guys who develop devilishly complicated cell phone plans, cable tv plans, drug packets that are 8oz big but contain 4 pills that would fit in a 1oz packet, etc. There must be an MBA school course 'How to screw over people with IQ lower than 90'. What i'm saying is that it's not a rich vs poor but rather intelligent vs less so (or just people who fail to pay sufficient attention).
- vacri 11y ago> even though you have overdraft "protection" turned off If you've explicitly opted to turn off overdraft protection, then the bank should honour that and let the payment through. The bank has no idea how vital that charge is for you. The problem is in the ridiculously onerous penalty.
- nandemo 11y ago*> You've got $16 left for food and then then the Flickr account you forgot to cancel gets charged to your account, I don't want to be rude but I wonder what set of circumstances leads a poor person to subscribe to a relatively superfluous service (unless you're a pro photographer?) in the first place.
- maehwasu 11y agoCould happen from anything. I've also been poor, and one thing that sent me over the edge was a check that someone waited months to cash. Thought I had $200 in my account, and made a payment with debit card, only to go under $0. What's worse, I wasn't notified, and made a couple more charges, all at exorbitant rates, until I realized what had happen. As always, it's best to interpret others' comments in the most generous way possible, rather than jumping to the conclusion that the poor person must have been spending too much money to pull himself up by his bootstraps.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago> I've also been poor, and one thing that sent me over the edge was a check that someone waited months to cash. Thought I had $200 in my account, and made a payment with debit card, only to go under $0. While this isn't something that is directly taught (a checking account ought to come with detailed guidance), if you write checks, you should use your checkbook to track your actual effective balance separate from how much the bank thinks you have. If you write a check, no matter how long ago, you don't have that money anymore, so you can't spend it. People often don't bother updating a check register each time they write a check, but if you have any serious threat of running out of funds in your account, you need to take the time to balance it to know how much you have. (Also a great reason to never use personal checks at all.) But the lack of any guidance in this regard, while supplying many ways to ask for your "current balance" (a complete fabrication once you've written any checks) is certainly one more way banks do nothing to prevent you from falling into a costly trap. I was lucky enough to receive very careful explanations of how a checking account really works when I was young.
- 11y ago