US Bank is ripping off its customers with their overdraft and "available" balance policies. I have been a customer with US Bank for over 5 years. At one time my business, my business partner and myself had close to 20 accounts with US Bank. I moved all of my accounts to US Bank and my business partner and businesses all moved accounts there as well. My business relationship with my business partner dissolved 2 years ago and most of the accounts are still with US Bank.
Starting a week ago, I was working long hours and did not check my bank balance for a few days. A few large debits came through and my "available" balance went into the negative with the "pending" transactions. I realized this over the weekend and deposited money to cover the negative balance. Since I work long hours, I use the ATM for all transactions.US Bank will make only the first $100 availalbe until the next business day. For 5 straight days, I racked up $549 in overdraft fees with small debits at restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, etc. Most of the debits were less then $20 in which US Bank charged me $37.50 for every debit. Every deposit I made was being eaten up by more overdraft fees the next day.
My balance in the ATM and online did not show a negative balance, but my "available" balance was negative due to pending debits and pending deposits. It was a snowball affect. Even though my "available" balance was negative, it still let all debit transactions used with my pin code were still allowed to go through, so I thought everything was good.US Bank charged me $549 in fees when they should have stopped letting my debit card work. If they would have done that, it would have let me know that my account was in the negative. I also noticed that my overdraft protection did not kick in until 3 days later. If that would have kicked in when it was supposed to, I would have not had any fees and would have $549 more in my account then I do now.
I think it is criminal how banks can let you have a negative balance, still use your debit card and then charge you fees on these transactions they should have never let go through and then charge overdraft fees on top of overdraft fees. I want to get in contact with other US Bank customers that this has happened too and I want to contact an attorney that would be willing to take on our case. You would think that US Bank would have learned from the class action lawsuit being filed against Bank of America and either change their policy or worked on waiving some of the overdraft fees.
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