FraudulentCharges.com

The financial institutions are going to get their come-uppance all the rest of this year, as President Obama’s consumer-friendly laws begin to put the screws in on all the financial service companies. It makes you wonder why did Bank of America give in and give in voluntarily in an area every bank cherishes as a way of dipping into your account – overdraft fees. The bank recently announced that it was doing away with it.  It used to be that if you used your debit card when you shopped for something, and you didn’t have enough cash in your bank checking account, they would let you purchase it anyway, and then penalize your with fees for the overdraft.

The way it stands not is, if you try to buy something without enough money in your account, you’ll just be turned down, no questions asked. This must not be good news for the Bank of America since overdraft fees account from debit cards rake in 60% of the fees. And that bank is the nation’s largest debit card issuer. This is going to shave millions of dollars off its bottom line, and will eat into other banks profits as well.

Overdraft protection may be an option for your bank if you indeed choose it. If you happen to be at an ATM or a store checkout, and you’re being billed for more than you currently possess, the machine will tell you that you can go ahead, but at penalty of $35 in overdraft fees. For a fee, one can have overdraft protection for your bills or checks. Basically, banks made $35, sometimes more, in fees, if you went over even two dollars more than you had.

This is excellent business for banks – if they put out money on a formal loan, they wouldn’t make $35 off $2, now would they? 25 billion in overdraft fees was billed by the banks last year for overdrafts. This new practice is certainly going to effect their bottom line when it comes into effect on July 1. You know it hurts them, because they’re advertising so hard to get you to opt in for their overdraft services.

Are the banks the bad guys? Let’s look at both sides of the story. Some time ago I worked for a bank and felt bad because of the practices the bank foisted on its customers that I had to go along with. For instance, let’s say that a customer has $100 in her bank checking account. She first uses her debit card to spend $10 at Burger King, she then spends $50 to pay her cell phone bill, and then she spends $102 on gas for her car. That means that with the first two purchases, she was completely within her limits, and she should be charged a penalty only for the last purchase. What they’ll do at the bank though, is, they will charge her the $102 for gas first, so that it wipes out her account, they’ll charge her penalty for it, and then they’ll record the other two smaller expenses. That way, they get to charge for $35 penalties three times instead of just once, if they did it the right way.

But in their defense, the banks argue that they’ve been pushed to such unfair extremes in their industry. Over the years they have been penalized by punishing consumer oriented laws. They say they’ve been taxed and regulated to death for decades, and they have no choice but to do what they can to claw their way back into profitability.

Another great source of fees for banks is the extra markups on personal checks given when customers order designer checks. Banks do markup these checks by 50% or even more since they buy them from a 3rd party source. By ordering direct and using designer checks online one can save even more plus one gets to choose from a larger selection of designs.

Certainly, these practices are not good; but they say that most of their rules are only to apply to people who overdraw. They say to those over-draftees, don’t overspend.