Bank Of America
ATM Deposit Available Balance Disappears Causing Overdraft

A deposit is made at "B of A" (Bank of America) in their ATM (which then they had upgraded and extended the hours that a transaction would be credited) and a receipt for the transaction was spit out of the machine. On the receipt were several bits of information, including the "available balance".

As many banks do, when you make an deposit in an ATM which has not as yet been verified, $100 of that deposit is made available immediately. Therefore, lets say a check from a private individual for $200 is deposited in your account. Your balance prior to the deposit is $25. The ATM receipt shows an AVAILABLE balance of $125. This is the balance of your account LESS any unverified transactions (electronic or otherwise) of which the bank is aware at that time.

(here comes the public ripoff part) You can at the time you deposit that check in the ATM choose "Yes I would like another transaction" and withdraw in cash from your account the amount of your available balance or a portion thereof from the machine (in cash, of course). If at some time after the ATM deposit was made but before it was verified an electronic transaction, say, a debit card purchase at a store hit your account, all of a sudden that hundred dollars that mind you just a minute ago was for all intents and purposes an AVAILABLE cash balance becomes an unverified deposit and will not satisfy lets call it that $35 purchase at the super market.

I might be wrong here, but I do not recall any banking institution that I have had an account with in the past processing the debits and credits to their customers' accounts in this fashion. I even worked for a time at Norwest Bank when they were "alive" (and this was in the returns dept!) and saw the operations from the inside. Maybe I am complaining about this for nothing and there is some bizarre twisted logic to this, but if there is $100 in your account that is in your account as cash all of a sudden isn't any more when there is the chance of the bank getting an overdraft charge (or 2 or 5) out of you. I wonder how many customers they do this to daily and how many millions they are ripping us off for??? It does not seem right!!

Company: Bank Of America
Country: USA
State: Arizona
City: Scottsdale
Address: 3132 N. Scottsdale Road

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