So over the labor day weekend, I thought I was being careful when it came to my debit charges. I was fine until I checked my statement the day after labor day. I had overdrawn my account 60 some dollars because my auto insurance was autodeducted on Tuesday. (Nothing was actaully posted until 12 AM Wednesday and the auto insurance was never listed as a pending transaction interestingly enough it just went through right away)
Chronologically, this was the last transaction I made and I rightfully should have been charged a fee for it. However, because of their shady practices they deducted it first because it was the most expensive. Then it cascaded through the transactions in a descending order. This way I could be charged a 33$ fee for each of the last 9 transactions (the most expensive being 15$ and the cheapest being 3$) even though they were made when I wasn't overdrawn.
When I called to complain, they told me this was their practice and they fed me a line about how people need their home mortgages and things to go through first so that's why they do it. They also told me they could turnoff the autodraft so it would deny overcharging my account, a direct contradiction of what I was told the last time I called requesting this to be done only to be told I would have to go into the bank to remove autodraft "protection".
Now I am trying to take my lumps and close my account. However, I have to wait until all pending transactions go through. They wouldn't accept cash from me to cover the transactions.
This infuriates me for so many reasons. First of all, we live in the 21st century. The idea that it take 4 days for deductions to go through is ridiculous. Computers don't need holidays, why can't they post deductions right away? It simply enables the banks to build up as many charges as possible to run through at once. Also their cascading system of charges is obviously only set up to get as much money from consumers as possible. If the system were set up properly, deductions would be made in a chronological order, not in descending order. I'm sure I'm not the first to get bilked like this from 53rd but it will be the last time I ever do any business with them again.
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