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Bank of America had a class action against them because they would reorder transactions to make you overdraft. For example, when I was relatively poor and near
by phoghed 2mo ago
Bank of America had a class action against them because they would reorder transactions to make you overdraft.
For example, when I was relatively poor and near 0 balance in like 2009 era I’d wait for my direct deposit to come so I could grocery shop and pay bills.
When it deposited, the funds would become available to use even though the transaction wasn’t cleared, pretty normal so far.
So say you pay 2 bills and grocery shop, come back on Monday and you’d see that your pending deposit vanished, 3 transactions cleared for 3 overdrafts, then your deposit cleared afterward.
This is just one that I know about because it happened to me. I wonder how many less blatant scams like this exist that most people aren’t even aware of.
- Freedumbs 2mo agoThis is 100% true and also a tactic used by PNC when I was a near zero person. The hack around it was to try to withdraw cash, then use that. They wouldn't let you overdraft cash withdrawal. That's one anecdotal likely stale trick to avoid the traps they set.
- kotaKat 2mo agoThe problem is then you have the card number sitting in some online card wallet, set for Autopay or something, and suddenly it's just... allowed to charge you next month even though the card's got nothing. Hell no, that shit should have bounced. Now you're in the hole $80 because your phone payment took an autopay from your Visa number. Blindly allowing recurring auths to bypass the overdraft rules is utterly insane. Whoops, let's just autobill a few extra zeros!
- pirates 2mo agoInteresting, PNC has never once done anything like this to me. In fact I feel that they are pretty up front about telling you what you have available and what your actual balance is.
- phoghed 2mo agoIt’s generally not something you’d notice if you’re not living on the edge of $0 balance. I’d be surprised if any banks are still doing it after the bofa settlement.
- Freedumbs 2mo agoThey were supposed to stop doing it 10 or so years ago. No clue if that's true. Haven't been the zero person for a while.
- sethammons 2mo agoWhen we had to juggle overdraft fees, our trick was to get a large money order. We would take one big overdraft with one fee and save ourselves from multiple fees while still paying multiple bills.
- mrguyorama 2mo agoTD Bank was slapped for the exact same process. Transactions would be reordered to ensure you incurred hundreds in overdraft fees even though you had just deposited a check. It's a bit of reverse check kiting: The bank changing when your check clears so that you actually don't have the money you think you do. Now, there were fine print that stated only X dollars worth of your deposit would be "Available immediately", but even that was a lie.