Although I have stopped banking with SunTrust, I thought it good for people to know about this rip-off. On many occasions, my bank statements showed that electronic debits or check card purchases were held for several days (some more than 5) in varying lengths, presumably to ensure that many debits hit at once. This creates a better probability that your account will be overdrafted, and they can then charge you a $30 fee for each charge that goes over.
For example, if you made purchases with a check card over the period of a week of about 40 dollars each day, the bank would wait until Sunday or Monday of the next week to debit your account $280. If your account had $199.99, the bank would take out the 280, leaving you with -$80.01, and then charge your account $30 twice, once for the one charge where there was not $40 to cover and once because there was only $39.99, which would leave you with -$140.01.
Now, I realize that with good account management techniques this would not happen, because you would know that you did not have enough money remaining for the final 2 purchases. However, someone who is not extremely careful could mistake one purchase for another because it has not been taken out yet, or forget about it completely. Maybe it was a $0.50 purchase that made him go 50 cents over. He still gets charged $30. Since these transactions are electronic, there should be minimal if any time to clear, and they should come out immediately.
In this age of advanced computers they still cannot figure out how? No, they just do not want to, because they get more money that way. $30 every time, from every customer.
0 comments