My complaint is with Bank of America, I feel they have created an overdraft system that is designed for them to make huge profits off the people who are the least able to afford it.
I know that I was in the wrong when I wrote a check on a Sunday that I knew was $100 over what I had in my account. But I also knew that I would have cash the next day to deposit and cover the check. Unfortunalty a car accident prevented me from making it to the bank the following day in order to deposit the necessary money.
With the system that BOA has in place, all charges that are made as credit typically pend for several days before they post to your account. So what BOA does is when those charges actually post they arrange them in order from the highest to the lowest, which I think is absolutly unfair and done specifically so they can reap the most money from an overdraft.
So, instead of me having one fee of $35 for that check, I ended up with about $350 in fees because of 8 transactions that had been made the previous Thurdsay, Friday and Saturday before I even wrote the check.
Because checks don't pend, they just automatically post that whole Monday after I wrote the check my account was fine, but then Tuedsay morning, it showed that the check had posted on Monday and of course it was the first transaction of the day, leaving me with 8 other transactions that were made prior to the check to be charged with overdraft fees.
On top of that I was going out of town on a business trip that Tuesday morning and wouldn't be returning until Sat. So I went to the bank that morning to see what could be done and because I still had two other transactions pending and I wanted to avoid two more fees. They told me nothing could be done because the actual overdraft fees hadn't been charged to my account yet. So I deposited enough money to bring my account into the positve and to cover the two pending transactions.
I explained that I was going out of town and wouldn't be able to deal with this until the following Monday, because I was concerned about a new fee that BOA has adopted, if you don't pay your overdraft fees within 5 days they charge you another $35.
An employee told me not to worry, that I had 5 business days from when the overdraft fees were charged to handle the matter. Well he misinformed me, it's actually 5 bus. Days from when your account becomes overdrawn.
In addition to that, they rearanged the transactions again so that all the overdraft fees were posted and then my deposit that I made to cover the two pending transactions. So I ended up with two more $35 dollar fees and an additional $35 fee for not being able to pay it all off within 5 days, making that a grand total of $350 in overdraft fees.
When I called customer service all I wanted was for 1 or 2 of the fees to be removed. I though that this was fair considering that their employee misinformed and the fact that I was out of town with no vehicle and no way to deal with the situation and they refused to help me. They just kept saying unless it's fruad or a bank error we can't remove the fees. Well how is their employee giving me the wrong information not a bank error.
Any way I ended up borrowing the money, paying off the account and closing it. I know most banks have the same polocies, but I just really wanted a fresh start with someone else. I hate BOA and will forever discourage anyone I know from doing business with them.
In my opinion this whole overdraft system is set up so that banks can make money off the people who can least afford it. Why do they think people overdraw their accounts, because they are rich, not likely. And then they come up with this new fee for not repaying in 5 days. Obviously if your account is overdrawn it's because you don't have money, so lets make you even more broke than you already are.
Honeslty I would prefer that they just didn't cover anything. If I don't have the money then the card shouldn't work. Or if it's a check send it back to the merchant. If that's what they would have done I would have had one $35 fee from the bank and a $25 fee from the merchant. I don't know about you but, $60 sound a whole lot better than $350.
Something needs to be done about this banking system, it's hurting the people who can least afford it. The fees should be a % of the amout you overdraw, not a set fee. How does it make sense to be charged $35 when you overdraw for under $5. Thats over a 0 they are charging you. Absolutly insane, it should be illegal.
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