This is fucking awesome.

Anyone know the name of the documentary he made?

At first, I'm thinking, "But if you try and spend money you don't have, that's your responsibility." But then I thought, "On the other hand, what basis do they have for charging you a hefty fee for not having enough money to spend?" I mean, what is the bank's loss? Interesting.

Any interest charged above say 10-20 percent is utterly outlandish and shouldn't be permitted. The damage it does to national economies is far greater then the benefit gained by those few wealthy enough to earn an "income" simply by lending money already accumulated.

High interest rates devalue money and fuel inflation. So a high interest credit card owned by some poor debted student or factory employee, who can't afford it in the first place, will indirectly devalue the income of hard a working "middle-class" person on the other side of the country, even if they the second guy has no debts at all. It essentially functions like a tax on money charged to everyone for the "privilege" of having an income, not by the governments (who might pave roads with at least SOME of the money), but by the privately owned, all for-profit banks that mostly just funnel it into corporate jets and executive holidays.

Over 3500%+ interest is absolutely ridiculous. No matter how small the sum.

>> ^eric3579:
Anyone know the name of the documentary he made?


"Overdrawn!" has a website here:

http://www.overdrawnmovie.net/

Fantastic. I will seriously consider trying this if it ever happens to me. I'm already fed up with their ridiculous $10 fee for transferring money from savings when I overdraw my checking. It should be free unless I totally overdraw all accounts. That's what I thought the ODP was for.

Of course, every time they have to transfer money, a guy has to go into a vault somewhere and remove the cash and then drive it to another vault and put it in. I mean, that's how banks work right? That's why all the BS charges; to pay for labor, right?

$150.00. That's my one day limit for overdraft fees. And here I never once thought of ACTUALLY taking the bank to small claims court.

This is indeed awesome.

I love you for posting this SpeveO!!! Off to small claims court!

I had some pretty ridiculous fees about a year back. It was on an Internet purchase and when PayPal reached for the money from my account, PayPal was declined and even though no money left my account, I was charged an overdraft. PayPal automatically retried the transaction 3 more times and each one incurred a charge. I believe each charge was $30 CDN.
Needless to say, I was unimpressed. I was living at home at the time so my father went into the bank and threatened to pull his saving account if they didn't reverse the charge.

Things like this is why I think there should be periodic organized runs on the banks. They've gotten so greedy and so over blown that it's time they get put in their place.

My bank has a lovely habit of processing transactions in order of their amount rather than the time of the purchase, so that if you make a few small purchases and then one large purchase that overdraws your account, the larger purchase is processed first so that they can charge you a series of overdraft fees on all the little purchases, rather than just one on the large purchase. Then to add insult to injury they process deposits after all purchases, so that if you're going to overdraft, but have made a deposit to ensure that you won't, they'll still hit you with the fee before the deposit.

This needs a happy tag but I don't think I can do it.

we should team up on this one, bcglorf. with our star points combined....

Is overdrafting really that common? Growing up I was continually hammered with tenets of fiscal responsibility and was told to never buy something (whether credit or debit) I couldn't afford...

I'm not saying this to disparage people who are legitimately in dire straits or having financial difficulty - could someone please explain 1. why people overdraft and 2. why the outrage over fees when you're spending money you don't actually have?

HaricotVert: Many people live just within their means. However, due to the timing that banks decide on for deposits and payments, many accounts will make payment directly before receiving deposits. Many banks have a charge for a declined payment. It's this charge that puts you into an overdraft, which the bank then also charges for.

Once that has occured, all other pending payments are then also charged for as failed payments. This increases the overdraft.

For people on particularly low incomes, this can even result in the following deposit not covering the resulting overdraft. So pay day has come and you receive negative money, and none of your bills are paid. It's enough to drive you crazy.

I can do it for ya!

*happy

Adding video to channels (Happy) - requested by silvercord.

If you are that worried about overdraft charges, maybe use a credit card? or use online billpay to write checks? Using a debt card is just stupid if you are bordering on insufficient funds, especially when many credit cards give 1-3% cash back on purchases.

So the way to get the fees back is to... sue the bank? I expected something that's a bit less of a hassle.

God damn, I hate overdraft fees. I went a few bucks over because the fucking system was messing up and showing me negative funds right after putting in 120 bucks (literally, I waited a few days to check the balance, and it said I had NEGATIVE money in there when I had about 6 bucks in before the deposit, and didn't use the account at all until I checked it after the funds got put in). I decided to just keep careful track of it and only spent what I thought was 115 of the 126 bucks in there...turns out I forgot to take into account a few of the ATM use charges, and somehow I ended up with a net balance of NEGATIVE 138 dollars due to overdraft fees. On top of that, they then pulled some cash out of my Dad's account to bring it up to zero WITHOUT ASKING HIM ABOUT IT because he helped me set up the account before I headed off to college, so his name was on it. After that, my dad had them shut the account down, but now I don't have any sort of record of the goddamn shenanigans, so I couldn't do anything about it even if I wanted to (this happened in December this past year).

>> ^omnistegan:
I had some pretty ridiculous fees about a year back. It was on an Internet purchase and when PayPal reached for the money from my account, PayPal was declined and even though no money left my account, I was charged an overdraft. PayPal automatically retried the transaction 3 more times and each one incurred a charge. I believe each charge was $30 CDN.
Needless to say, I was unimpressed. I was living at home at the time so my father went into the bank and threatened to pull his saving account if they didn't reverse the charge.


Holy shit, I've had something like this happen to me as well...a purchase wasn't actually processed until over TWO WEEKS after I ordered something, and then a more recent purchase was turned down due to insufficient funds a day later because of the other purchase not processing for whatever reason. This gave me an overdraft, and then a few days later the system automatically tried again and I got ANOTHER fee. My next paycheck disappeared almost completely as soon as I got it, I was unbelievably pissed but didn't know of anything I could do about it. I tried complaining to the bank and they just said "well that's how it works, we're really sorry for the inconvenience, blah blah blah."

Shit happened in Spring semester too, and money's always really tight then, so it was a huge pain in the ass.

Thanks all, that makes more sense now.

I use my credit card for all of my monthly transactions, except for my rent check. (Utilities can be paid online in many areas.) Much simpler to organize things with just one payment each month to pay off the credit card bill.

And that's how America fails. American banks, specifically.

>> ^potchi79:
Fantastic. I will seriously consider trying this if it ever happens to me. I'm already fed up with their ridiculous $10 fee for transferring money from savings when I overdraw my checking. It should be free unless I totally overdraw all accounts. That's what I thought the ODP was for.
Of course, every time they have to transfer money, a guy has to go into a vault somewhere and remove the cash and then drive it to another vault and put it in. I mean, that's how banks work right? That's why all the BS charges; to pay for labor, right?


Yeah, we do.

Have you ever thought about keeping a register like the old days? I work at a bank and deal with customers who overdraft their account everyday and it is mostly because they don't keep track of what they have. Let's let the internet do it or an automated phone system do it. Guess what people, that way can't tell if you wrote checks that haven't cleared. It's only as useful as the information it's given. Use a register please! And to those who do overdraft, don't come asking for fee reversals when you go to the boat or a bar and overdraw, that just shows no responsibility at all.

I look at every customer on a case by case basis when I deal with fees. I realize things happen sometimes and most of the time they don't keep a register. Had they, about 80% of the overdrafts wouldn't happen. It's NOT a bank error. It's user error. You swipe that card, you know how much money is in your account. We are not the bank police. Get a register.

I'm not trying to be rude or anything but too many people keep swiping and authorizing transactions with their debit card and it gets to be a pain in the ass to deal with.

I'm currently trying this method.. i had only overdrawn 12.52 because of bank fees in a bank account I never used, and was notified months later that the US Bank fees had grown to an astonishing $370.00. They wanted to settle the matter for $100, so I sucked up my pride and walked in with a $100 bill.. but for some reason they couldn't pull up the account.
I made a complaint to the bank, no call was returned. I made a second attempt to pay it a couple weeks later, but they had sold the account after adding another $370 in fees.. how nice.
Now, I'm contacted by a collection agency wanting $1012.00., so I immediately made a small claims suit to US Bank to resolve the issue.

No response yet...

>> ^solution666:
I'm currently trying this method.. i had only overdrawn 12.52 because of bank fees in a bank account I never used, and was notified months later that the US Bank fees had grown to an astonishing $370.00. They wanted to settle the matter for $100, so I sucked up my pride and walked in with a $100 bill.. but for some reason they couldn't pull up the account.
I made a complaint to the bank, no call was returned. I made a second attempt to pay it a couple weeks later, but they had sold the account after adding another $370 in fees.. how nice.
Now, I'm contacted by a collection agency wanting $1012.00., so I immediately made a small claims suit to US Bank to resolve the issue.
No response yet...


--------------------------------------------
SUCCESS!!!
The Bank took their sweet-ass time, but called me back wanting to withdraw the collection agency, remove the history from the credit bureaus, and settle for the minimal amount again. So.. THIS METHOD DOES WORK. THANK YOU!
BTW.. IT DOESN'T JUST COST 25 BUCKS OR WHATEVER TO FILE THESE SMALL CLAIMS SUITS. IT COST ME $55 TO FILE IT AT COURT, PLUS $40 TO HAVE THE PAPERS DELIVERED.