After working at a large bank years ago I could not believe how PNC Bank could change they policies to rip off customers the way they are doing now. I have have several situations that I have had to confront the Bank on, so I will only talk about two that I thought were the worst.
The first was when I had several checks post to my account and because of a uncollected funds issue (they can hold funds for up to two weeks in some cases) I have 8 overdraft charges. I actually had enough funds to cover 7 of the eight checks, however, the policy was to post the largest to smallest check, thereby causing the greatest number of overdraft charges. When I asked why this was done the person said they do that to help the customer because the large checks are often their mortgage payment and they want to make sure that it gets paid. I then reminded the bank person that they paid all of the items so the order of payment is strictly a way to generate fees. They also will only refund one fee per year.
The second situation was discovered when my son, who uses a debit card only to withdraw or pay bills, received an overdraft notice in the mail. His primary reason for not using checks was to avoid overdrawing his account since a debit transaction posts (in memo form at a minimum) real-time. He received three overdraft charges and when we discussed them with the PNC person we were amazed to find out the unlike in the past, where if you did not have funds to cover a debit card transaction it would decline the transaction, the new policy allowed the transaction without alerting the person to the fact that they will receive a $34.00 charge for each overdraft. As a result my son spent about $25.00 on three transactions and was charge fees of $102 for one day on a "loan" of $25.00. This works out to about 148,000% APR interest. So as you can see this make the payday loan people and the loan sharks look like pikers.
In the old days when a transaction caused a "potential overdraft" your banker would actually review the item and determine if paying or returning the item was appropriate. The banks cannot argue that this is done since all of this process is automatic, programmed and approved by top bank management.
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