First of all, I do admit, we made a mistake. We overdrafted by $7.88. We should not have done that, but I caught the mistake at 8:30, my husband made the offending purchase at 8:15. I got immediately in the car and went to the bank. To my shock and horror, I find not a regular ATM where you can deposit cash immediately, but a depository! And OLD FASHIONED depository!
I deposit money to cover it plus some extra, and go home. Assuming that since he made the purchase last night, it will not post for two days, and since they don't have immediate cash deposit available LIKE most modern banks, they are a bit lenient.
Not so. I wake up to find a $103 bounce fee with no clear explanation on the bank account. I knew we overdrew by $8.00, but $103???!!! Come on!
I called the bank, and apparently, they charge you whether the debits are pending OR posted! And no, they don't credit the money in the depository first. Apparently, the charges that racked up the $103 fee (3 of them) were around $5, $3, and $1.20. Seriously.
That was enough for us, we got the cash we needed out of our bills account to go to the bank and deposit enough money to keep a 0 balance until our 90 days with this bank are up and we can shut it down without accrueing another fee. When we got there and paid the money to the teller, she said, well, it's a good thing that you got here before 2:00 or all of the other pending charges would have bounced! We were there at 1:00... THANK GOD! We couldn't afford another $300.. We really couldn't afford the first $100.
We just got a call at 5:00 from first convenience bank notifying us that we had withdrawn our account. So convenient of them to wait until after 2:00 to notify us... They would have already had another $350 in their pockets from us by then had we not noticed the mistake on our own, and of course, by 5:00 it would have been too late to do anything about it, even a trip to the bank to drop more money in the money hole won't do you any good. Or I wouldn't have bounced in the first place.
We went to Chase and opened up an account. They, like Bank of America (Our Bills account) have an ATM that allows immediate cash deposits should you make a mistake like that. And. Unlike this bank, they deposit the cash IMMEDIATELY not on weekdays only if you are lucky enough to make it to the bank before 2:00.
Oh yeah! And I can link it up to my savings account and avoid late fees alltogether... Suhweet! They also gave us $100 for opening a new account, which will cover the bounce fees from the other bank. I wish we would have shut this account down a week ago and avoided it all together and just pocketed the $100 instead of throwing it down the toilet with 1st Convenience Bank.
Avoid it if you are choosing a bank. Go to one that TRULY has 24 hour service!
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