I had money in my account I made many deposits and charges (I NEVER used checks) anyway Monday night the 12th after going to compusa to purchase a surge protector I logged into wachovia.com to check my account. 100% of all charges where accounted for and tallied and the balance was positive. I had a balance of $11.41 plus or minus a nickel.
I wake up tuesday morning and log in again (waiting for a pay deposit) and I notice a new charge $36 a payment to my radio shack card. Oh XXXX I forgot about that. They accepted the payment and assesed the usual insane $35 fee ($10 MORE than the overdraft of $24.59) OK I screwed up I can eat that I made sure not to buy anything and I had no further pending charges I checked my tally sheet all was now 100% accounted for.
Tuesday night I log in and I see a $105 overdraft fee? Wednesday Morning another Overdraft charge of $140 and Wednesday night YET ANOTHER overdraft charge of $105 bringing my balance to a NEGATIVE $374.59
Thats right for a SINGLE overdraft of $24.59 they charged me 9 $35 overdraft fee's let me put this in perspective. This is a daily interest rate of 1,000% (no thats not a type do the math) with an equivalent APR (annual percentage rate) of 365,000
Let me type that again an APR of over 1/3 of a MILLION PERCENT interest!
Needless to say I was flipping. I also noticed ALL my transactions were wiped out and reapplied in a NEW order different than the order they were in the night before. (IE the order in which I MADE them)
So how does this happen. How can I have $11.41 make a charge of $36 for a single overdraft of $24.59 result in NINE overdrafts and $350 in fees.
Here is how. I am going to QUOTE a portion of the user agreement for citizen's bank (I happened to have that one handy a nearly identical section is in wachovia's and most other banks so far that I have checked)
"11. Payment of Checks and Other Transactions.
We may pay checks, in-person withdrawals, ATM withdrawals, point-of-sale transactions, or any other paper or electronic transactions (Transactions) in any order determined by us, even if (a) paying a particular Transaction results in an insufficient balance in your account to pay one or more other Transactions that otherwise could have been paid out of your account, or (b) useing a particular order results in payment of fewer Transactions or the imposition of additional fees. We may chance the order in which we pay Transactions without prior notice to you. You should be aware that the order in which we pay Transactions may increase the overdraft/insufficient available funds fees you have to pay if sufficient funds are not available in your account when a Transaction is processed to your account. We are not liable for such overdrafts. The amount of the overdraft/insufficient available funds fee is disclosed in the Fees and Features guide."
Read that a couple of times and THINK about what it says. It quite literally SAYS, ADMITS TO, and EVEN DESCRIBES specifically HOW this clause WILL be used to commit fraud embezzlement and racketeering offenses against you.
Fraud because they are saying not only can they DECIDE the order of your transaction regardles of the order in which you make them but they can CHANGE this order post facto with NO time limit at all or conditions at all. IE they can MANIPULATE the data and your records to there advantage.
This is FRAUD and since they are charging FEES this is embezzlement since it RESULTS from the fraudulent manipulation of the transactions and since they offer OVERDRAFT protection (which cost usually almost half what the damned overdraft fee's cost) its also potentially racketeering!!!
AND it gets worse.in the past not only was overdraft from savings a courtesy (it IS your money after all) but they used to move the funds in "chunks" $50 or $100 at a time from savings to checking. NOW they move precisely the amount needed so that if you have multiple overdrafts from your savings they can charges you these fee's multiple times
PLUS if you have more than 6 of these a month (your only allowed 6 withdrawals from savings a month or it has to be a checking account) they can charge you FURTHER FEE's (and off course in most cases you can not overdraft from checking to checking IE open a second checking account to avoid this 6 transaction limit will not work most of the time)
So what happened to me?
They took ALL my transactions from the weekend ERASED THEM and DURING these calculations returned those funds to my tally total. THEN they REAPPLIED all these transactions in order from biggest to smallest instead of the order in which they were charged) therby resulting in the LARGEST number of overdraft fee's possible.
That is FRAUD - This is Embezzlement and since they said I should have had overdraft for which they charge $15 for EACH use) thats also in my opinion racketeering.
Let me explain this in another way for you must be thinking right now this is impossible you can not do that.
Your both right and wrong.in REALITY ie the PHYSICAL world NO you can not do this. IE how would they GOTO the places I patronized TAKE BACK my cash and redistribute in a new order? They can not BUT this is all electronic. Its just numbers on a peices of paper (or in a hard drive somewhere so let me illustrate)
I am making these numbers mathematically simple so we can all do the math in our heads
You have $51 in your bank account. Cash no waiting.
You then go shopping.
$5 at wawa (balance $46)
$5 at Burger Kind (balance $41)
$6 at Dollar Store (balance $35)
$10 at Gas Station (Balance $25)
$2 At Donation to a website (balance $23)
$10 At the Movie Theater (balance $13)
$5 Wawa on way home (balance $8)
Ok you arrive at home log into wachovia.com and verify all the charges have come through and there they are all listed on the website. It also shows your balance as $8
The Next morning you wake up and oh shit you forgot about your credit card payment of $50 It came through today.
They accept the charge making your balance -$42.00 and then add the $35 fee making your balance -$77.00
Ok your thinking thats insane to charge $35 for a $42 overdraw but you did agree to it so you prepare to go pay the penalty.
Later that night you log back in and things are VERY different. All your transaction from the day before are GONE and reapplied in a NEW order.
NOW your statement looks like this.
$50 Credit Card
$10 Movie Theater
$10 Gas Station
$6 Dollar Store
$5 Wawa
$5 Wawa
$5 Burger King
$2 Web Donation
Whats your new bank balance?
We lets do the "Newspeak" math here.
$50 Credit Card (Balance $1)
$10 Movie Theater (Balance -$9 $35fee $-44)
$10 Gas Station (Balance -$89)
$6 Dollar Store (Balance -$130)
$5 Wawa (Balance -$170)
$5 Wawa (Balance -$210)
$5 Burger King (Balance -$250)
$2 Web Donation (Balance -$287)
NEWSPEAK total balance -$287
$42 in overdraw for a single transaction manipulated after the fact into 7 overdrafts resulting in fees not of -$35 but of -$245
Just by altering the order of transaction from biggest to smallest they made sure to overdraw the account FIRST maximizing the number of over drafts by moving all the little transactions to the end.
If I would have spent $43 in a SINGLE transaction resulting in the EXACT same $8 balance and then have the $50 charge come through I would only have been billed ONE overdraft of $35
So first they committed fraud by manipulating my charges (records) to there financial benefit (this is also a form of fraud called embezzlement check it out in a dictionary you and I GO TO PRISON for a long long time if we do this) and since they insinuated that I should have sucked up there overdraft protection at $15 per transaction (I think wachovia might be $10 per Citizens is $15 per overdraft from savings) I believe that also qualified under the definition of Racketeering! (protection money or services for hardships THEY themselves create with the charge order manipulation ie thats a racket by the definition I have found)
Just do the math. It will BLOW your mind. This is SO MIND BLOWING that when they did this too me 2 weeks ago I had assumed it was just some sick mistake. Some simple thing. The lady at the branch ALSO thought this was highly irregular and she refunded me the $275 in fees they charged me 2 weeks ago (same scenario)
Now you might think did I not learn. Remember we did not fully REALIZE (me or the teller) what had just happened we had both assumed it was just some simply glitch. YES I goofed and forgot my $36 credit card payment and at most I should be liable (questionable as beeing overly excesive) for a SINGLE overdraft fee. I ONLY overdrew the account by $24.59) My problem is the fraud of manipulating my records into 9 over drafts instead of the proper ONE.
This week she was clearly spoken to about this illegal practice and though compssionate turned me over to the bank manager.
This was so freaking odd that EVEN SHE did not fully comprehend what she was trying to tell me as she tried to DEFEND the banks right to do this.
She tried to say oh it was because you deposited your paycheck on friday after hours so it did not count till monday.
I corrected her stating I CASHED my paycheck and then handed the CASH back to the teller for deposit so that it would be a CASH deposit in which case the funds would be available right away.
After some phone call and delusions she tried to find another reason this was allowed eventually finding the we can defraud you by manipulating your records clause at which point I gave up and left after depositing ONLY the $24.59 (I rounded it up to $25 I wanted to pay to the penny but I was not sure if it was $24.56 or $24.59 and did not want to legitimately owe them even 3 cents so I just upped it to $25 and walked out.
BTW if your wealthy enough to not have to worry about overdrawing your account YOUR account features include NO fees for overdrafts and NO FEES for overdraw protection transfers. Cute huh they waive the fees to the few people who would never have to worry about such things to begin with (minimum constant balance of $5000 required for this privilege)
I am going to do whatever it takes to make it ILLEGAL for banks to do this (its already illegal it just has to be enforced) I am going to make there lives hell with as much publicity on this as I can. I want a REFUND of all overdraft fees of this sort for the last 2 years minimum as restitution for there crimes (and I want them made to do this for ALL of there customers!!!) and a law enacted that in any monetary calculations the order should decided by WHATEVER order is in the best interest of the CUSTOMER not the BANK.
I also would love to see criminal charges brought up on those that CREATED these clauses.
I am so stinking mad right now you have no idea. I will not let this stand. I will devote a SIGNIFICANT PORTION of my life to making this RIGHT.
I am even making a website to centralize this specific issue. I just bought the domain name www.usabankfraud.com - I want to OWN these people. They are criminals plain and simple and should be dealt with as such.
Chris
Levittown, Pennsylvania
U.S.A.
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