With all the banking woes out there banks have found a new way to make money. If people thought banks were unscrupulous before hold onto your panties.
Many banks are disguising their new practice as a way to “help their customer” when it is the bank who is helping themselves to your hard earned money. If you have a check card and have bills tied to that card be careful!! In very recent times if a business tried to charge a bill and there was no money in the account the card would decline. However now many banks have decided for “your benefit” they will pay the charge for you and charge you an overdraft fee for them helping you out. Some banks are even charging their customers a returned fee if the charge is declined and they do not pay it. Sounds so pleasant doesn’t it? I feel so warm and fuzzy.
The other scam banks are working to help their customers is changing policy without notifying their customers. As I was told by one bank representative this morning “we do notify our customers as we publish the changes on our website”. So customers are expected to go to the banks website to read changes instead of being notified by mail. To me this seems a bit dishonest and a wait to sneak in new changes without notifying customers properly. After all if the customer does not bother to read your website it is their fault since you the bank notified them. Yeah that sounds like a great service to one’s customer!
Hold on tight that is not all. Here is another scam to create more fees. If you have more than one checking account with your bank and you use the other accounts as overdraft protection be careful. My bank in the past would draw money from both accounts if either account could not cover the amount of the check being paid. Well they changed their policy recently which they notified their customers through their website only. Now they will only debit one account for the overdraft. So regardless if you have the money in the accounts to cover the check they return it and charge you a fee.
All these practices are designed to create more revenue for the bank and nothing more. The bank employees try to insult our intelligence by telling us how this will benefit only us the customer. It is not enough that these banks got government money (our money) in bailouts now they want to invent ways to stick it to their customer every chance they get. I encourage people to write their banks and their state representatives about this unfair banking practices. These issues are not isolated to a certain bank either as I have received reports from others who have experienced the same problems.
1 response so far ↓
Krissy // January 22, 2009 at 7:24 pm |
We had that problem most recently. My grandfather’s account became overdrawn when he was in the hospital. We weren’t aware that he had automatic transactions for DirecTV, AT&T Wireless, Verizon and his health insurance. And ALL OF THOSE WENT THROUGH leaving him $4,500 over drawn and $1,000 of that was in overdraft fees. Shouldn’t they just stop the charges from going through if there is no money in the account??? That’s a rip off to customers so that the banks can make the money in overdraft fees. What sucks, is that we most recently deposited his checks into another account so we could pay for his funeral (my grandfather died last week) and they IMMEDIATELY took the money out of the account and deposited it into the overdrawn account, when the bank told us specifically to put the funds in another account so that we could write the funeral expenses from that. The banks don’t know their ass from their elbow and don’t make anything clear. It’s been pissing me off for months, now. They’re doing this all for their benefit.