f13.net

I just looked at a customer's bank statement and I still can't grasp the possibility of what the bank is doing being legal.

The customer had a balance of $12 in her account.
She had a couple products from us billing out of that account.
She called us to change cards, and one of the products was missed.
We billed her $23, putting her account to -$11.

The bank then charged her $37 for the overdraft, putting her account to -$48.
The bank then proceded to charge her $8 per day, including weekends as a daily overdraft fee.   :uhrr:

She brought it to our attention three weeks later, and we refunded the $23 and replaced it on her new card. Her bank is now telling her that that refund does not count as a "reversal" and instead is just a refund, therefore she owes them $200+, plus a further $8 per day.

(this is why we ask customers for Credit Cards rather than debit cards - apparently Americans don't use CCs any more though)

Debit Cards - a convenient way for your bank to ream out your ass if you ever screw up.

If your checking account is routinely bordering on empty, a debit card is Not For You.

This happened to me before.

I over-drafted once, for like 1$. The fee for that was 30$. However, every day after that, they attempted to charge the 30$. Pushing me to -90$, the next day more, and more and more. Basically snowballing the fee every day because the fee could not be collected on, so I was charged more fees for them attempting to collect on the previous fee.

I had to settle the bill as I had no recourse. Top it all off with the insult that I could have just applied for overdraft protection (A loan system) and would have avoided all this (at 30 something% interest as its drawn as cash).

Once again, I'm sure the rich dont have this problem, so why should there be any regulations? Me and your client are lazy people who deserve what happened to us.  :oh_i_see:



Debit cards can be run as credit. If she or I had run it as debit it would have been declined. Now, also note, running it as credit, and over drawing, gives no such indication what so ever to you until your next statement.

Debit Cards are the new hotness, because you can't charge more than you have in the bank... :awesome_for_real:

Banks have gotten ridiculous with the fees.  Probably to make up for the tiny amount of credit card reform forced upon them in addition to being greedy fucks.  This is why I only use a local credit union.

I could've sworn new legislation passed last year that made the whole 'spend more than is in your account' thing an opt-in system, and if you didn't opt in it just declined the charge.

I was looking over my statement a few days ago and noticed that every time I hit an ATM, i'm getting either double or triple charged, that should be a fun trip to the bank after finals.

(Withdraw $40, charge shows as atm location xx for $42.50, then theres another $2.50 fee from the same atm, and sometimes a third $2.50 fee)

Essentially, they are running it as credit - and charging her interest on it. Effectively 26000% per year on that $11, considering what the balance would be at after a year of those $8 charges.

Should be one from the ATM, then one for your bank if its not your bank ATM. But yeah  :oh_i_see:

A very, very good reason to use a credit card instead of a debit card is that if someone gets the number and charges shit they aren't doing it with your personal money. 

Dress nicely and go into your local branch in person.  Ask to speak with someone regarding your account, not a teller at a window.  You want to sit down with someone to understand what happened, even if you already know what is going on.  Play dumb.  Ask for forgiveness, if they won't, ask them to meet you in the middle.  

If they can't at least do that, politely cancel your account and shift to another bank.  Mistakes happen.  Like any other business, they can't make money if they don't have you as a customer.  Just ask the person:  Is this $200 fee worth losing a lifetime of business with your organization.  

They might tell you to go fuckoff... if they do, just close it and walk out.

Your bank is likely assessing a fee for your usage of an outside ATM.  So you pay $2.50 to your bank and $2.50 to thei ATM's owner. 

The big consumer credit card law that forced things like same day of the month bill due dates and how long will it take to pay off with minimums declarations also made it so you have to opt in to allow your debit card to go through if you have NSF.

I was getting about a dozen emails/letters a week from Chase about mine. I was like "hell yeah I want it to decline if I don't have the money!" when they were warning me with all the gloom and doom that "Your purchases might not go through!".

The way debitcards work with the system is all a bunch of wackiness. There are a number of bars here owned by the same guy that will put 2 separate $25 "pre-auths" on your card when you open a tab. With debit cards it acts like a transaction that is separate from your purchase and it takes like 3 days for those 2 blocks of 25 bucks to become "available" again.

The banks can't do this crazy shit to debit card purchases anymore (or at least, they can do a lot less). Some banks were making close to 30% of their profits off of these debit card fees alone. But, the banks have already tried to market their way out of this. My bank has been deluging me with this special "rewards" program on my debit - but it only works if you DON'T use your debit as a debit (with PIN number at the point of sale) but as a credit card instead. This is fucking evilly ingenious. Credit card transactions usually take 2 or 3 days to clear the bank, and can be reordered by the bank to their benefit because unlike debits, they aren't meant to go directly out of the account. So you can keep happily charging away without being denied even though your account would be drained with the purchases you've already made.

I fucking hate banks.

I got charged $8 a month for not having activity with my savings account.  Time to find a new bank.  I only got the savings account to have more services with my checking account.  I'm sure someone else will be happy to have my money.  That or I'm going to start a barter system.

Anyone want a chicken in exchange for some Steam purchases?  :why_so_serious:

Bank of America owns my mortgage -- and keeps trying to give me credit cards -- and is why I'm looking to refinance.

Among other things? My escrow account when like 9 dollars negative for two weeks. I wasn't short on escrow, I actually had a surplus at the end of the year they rolled over. Yet, to avoid the absolute fucking end of the world capitalistic HORROR of my account going 9 dollars into the red before my next mortgage payment comes in...

They jacked up my escrow. Despite rolling over money this year. And it gets better -- they jacked it up nine hundred fucking dollars a year. Yeah, I shit you not. Despite starting the year with a positive balance, having no changes in property tax and insurance fees, and only going 9 dollars in the hole because they paid out my yearly insurance a few weeks early.....

I am giving BoA a minimum of a 900 dollar, interest free loan.

How else can they maintain double-digit profits?

Why the fuck do people use banks any more? I understand that for certain business setups a credit union doesn't work, but for personal stuff? It boggles my mind that they volunteer for repeated sandpaper condom assfuckings.

What do you suggest when you live in a town with a crooked credit union?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qttxEQikeu0

You can get fucked even harder if you use your pin and run it as debit though - you're not allowed to dispute those charges.  So if you buy something, put in your pin, it turns out to be defective/counterfeit/etc/etc and the company tells you to fuck off, you have absolutely zero recourse if you ran it as debit instead of credit.

I usually just find a credit card with a good incentive plan (miles, 1% cash back, etc.) and use it like cash paying the balance monthly.

Now someone will tell me that's a bad idea too...  :ye_gods:

Use the credit union from a few towns over.

Direct deposit, snail mail checks, and ATMs will cover you.  My credit union is sixty miles away, but I will never give them up.  I've made it twenty years like this.  I didn't even have to visit them in person when I did my latest mortgage.  All handled over the phone and online.

Heh, I've never had a problem with my bank.  Ever.

That being said, I don't keep my savings there (the interest is paltry), and I don't live on slim margins.  It's just for the checking account to pay bills.   

It actually hurts your credit score. I do the same thing and my recent credit report came back with a ding for having a largely monthly balance, even though I pay it off completely.

Was the account a free checking account?  Banks jacked fees in order to profitably offer free checking.  Is it better to pay $8 a month to have a checking account with low overdraft fees or have free checking and larger overdraft fees?  People that complain about overdraft fees are morons. Don't overdraft.  How hard is it to go to an ATM and check your balance?

The new consumer finance law limits what banks can charge for things like overdrafting. That means free checking for people with less than $1,000 monthly balances are going away.  Are people going to be better off as a result?  Reloadable debit cards charge overdraft fees and reload fees and ATM fees and inactive fees and annual fees and....you get the drift.

When banks are intentionally reordering the way charges hit the bank to ENSURE that you go overdraft on the maximum amount of transactions so that they can charge multiple overdraft fees instead of the 1 or 2 you might have had without their reordering, that's not a fair transaction, that's legalized fucking robbery. When banks market your debit card as being totally not something that can overdraft because "hey, it won't let you charge that thing if you don't have the money in your account" which is blatantly un-fucking-true, that's legalized fucking robbery. The only moronic behavior on the part of the consumer is believing that a bank is actually treating you honestly and fairly.

I learned never to have close to a zero balance on my bank account and to always keep a nice buffer, because I've stumbled enough with the way the system works to get as much money out of me as possible. I still choke at the extra $5 I pay now to get money from another bank's ATM in addition to the fees the provider charges.

I think the bank is right to deter people abusing their system with fees, but there are things that go in the extreme other direction.

I also can't tell if the bank has been clear about what will happen with certain actions and people ignore that then complain when they rack it up. I am definitely willing to believe they would engage in obfuscation versus their clients to get as much money as they can out of them.

Banking in North America is like, 40 years behind banking elsewhere in the world. And by "elsewhere in the world" I mean, of course, Norway. :P Nearly 4 months in Montreal now, and I still struggle to understand why exactly the banks here are allowed to operate as they do, and why people put up with it.

Because the U.S. government does not regulate shit with regards to the financial sector anymore, and what they do regulate is only to help the big guy take more from the little guy?

That being said, I was leery of Chase buying BankOne but I have actually been pretty happy with them overall. Of course, there is a Chase ATM in every Walgreens (6 of them in town) and there are 3 Chase branches in town with ATMs so I don't really use non-bank ATMs so I don't get the fees.

The WaMu-Chase transition kind of sucked for us, since WaMu never charged fees for using other people's ATMs at all.

I dumped Nations Bank\Bank of America and Wells Fargo over the shit they tried to pull with me.  I managed to switch to USAA and it's been the best thing that ever happened to me regarding banking.  Finding a good bank is difficult indeed.

Don't use banks, use credit unions.   There's no profit motive AND they're covered by something like the FDIC for the same amounts.  If you have more than $250k in liquid assets.. why? What are you buying?

The reordering of transactions AND the "we'll let that $23 charge go through even though you have $11" are both supposed to have stopped with the bank reform bill.  However, if I recall that all isn't fully implemented until April 2011.  I can't find anything on it, but my google-fu is very weak tonight.


Most people do.. that's where they get fucked.  Checking your ATM balance and going "Oh, I've got $50 still" is the easiest way of getting fucked there is.  I know, I lived through it in college and then my wife did the same damn thing.  It's not a true account if some merchant hasn't put the charge through yet.  Watch your bank account and you'll see some charges show up 3-4 days or even a week later.

The only way to keep an accurate account is to.. account for every transaction you do.  Be it a ledger, an excel spreadsheet or quicken.. don't do that shit in your head.  Yet many, many people do and then they get fucked because Burger King didn't put your $10 lunch transaction through until 2 days later, so you really only had $40, but charged $44.  Whoops, now you owe the bank $35 (or more).  Oh wait, here's a $3 POS transaction, too.  If you're lucky that's ONLY $35 more dollars, but if your bank is like 5/3 it's $70 because it's the 2nd overdraft in a 15 day period. Plus that $5/ day overdraft fee for them floating you a loan.    So that $47 you thought you spent is really somewhere near or over $100.

Here's how you avoid getting fucked by the bank and save money in the process:

Carry cash.
Do not use automated payment plans.

At the beginning of the week, get out a set amount.  It's fine to bank online (as long as your utility companies, credit cards, etc don't charge you fees for banking online otherwise just write a paper check and mail the sumbitch the old fashioned way).  But automatic payment plans increase your chance for overdrafting your account.  Pay it when you know you have the money in your account.  

The key here is the psychological factor.  With a debit (or credit) card, you have no real concept of just how much money you're spending.  But if you're physically handing over money - actually seeing the twenties, fifties and hundreds leaving your hand - you're able to better process just how much you're spending.  You get a sense of buyers remorse before even leaving the story.  The banks prey on that.

Above all else, find a local (regional) type bank or a credit union and use them.  Make a point to go in one of the branches quite often and get known (as well as to get to know the manager, head teller, etc).  They are more likely to give you a break if you screw up if they know you and feel like they're your friend than just a customer (again, the psychological aspect comes into play).

That's what I do. I have auto-payment on pretty much everything to my card and don't use cash much. Once a month I pay it online out of my checking account. I snag hundreds of dollars a year using the credit card. I've thought about switching to an airline miles cards but the math hasn't worked out yet considering how often I travel (the upgrades would tip the balance but I don't fly enough).

I agree for people like my ex who can't keep track of things.  Me?  I personally mentally note everything I spend money on and have yet to overdraft in years.  Always have surpluses and never run dangerously close.  It really takes the right mindset to do that though and very few I find can.

I just keep a cushion in my bank account that's in excess of anything I might conceivably spend money on.  As long as the cushion is staying constant or growing I don't worry too much about tracking what I spend, other than reviewing the statement at the end of the month to make sure there aren't any suspicious charges.

(http://www.astonmartinpic.com/astonmartin/car/pictures/2010/09/2009-aston-martin-dbs-4131548-168.jpg)  :drill:

Canadian banks don't generally do that kind of nonsense. Not because they're nice people but because they still fantasize that the government will someday allow them all to merge into one super bank that's "too big to fail" and can get up to the kind of wacky hijinks our southern neighbours are into.  So for now, they try not to be obvious douchebags to the public.

Banks are okay, but you really need to shop around.   I suggest a local/regional bank that has a good rating.  Chase, Citi, BoA, etc. are not interested in individual customers.  There are also shady local/regional banks.  And I agree with whoever above said that USAA was a good experience.  It is the best bank I've dealt with, hands down.

Here's the catch - it wasn't her fault. she was planning on closing the account and only had $11 in it. She called us to change the account her monthly billing comes out of, and we missed one of the charges. That caused her to overdraft about $12.

The point where it get's really evil is here:
 - she noticed the overdraft a few weeks later and told us - so we refunded the charge that was placed on the wrong account, advising her that most banks reverse the overdraft fees once we reverse our charge (most of them do)
 - the bank then told her that they would not reverse the charges as we just gave her a refund, and that doesn't count as reversing the charge
 - I then advised her to dispute the original charge completely then (we would not fight it) - the bank refuses to dispute the charge, because it was refunded

Worst I'm aware of over here in the UK, from a friend who worked as a teller for a few years, is the way people who don't really understand credit scores and the like get fucked when they decide to go mortgage shopping the way you shop for anything else. Going into all the different banks on the high street and comparing the rates they get offered, which results in 7 or 8 credit checks in an hour which totally fucks their credit rating and instead of being able to get the 8% mortgage they were offered by bank A an hour ago they're getting offered 23%. Outside of that though, I don't get charged for withdrawing from any bank ATM (as in any) and have a reasonable charge and interest free overdraft on my account with a much bigger possible one if I warn the bank beforehand. I avoid getting overdrawn (beyond what I can) by just frequently checking my balance and generally trying to pay for things with cash from the ATM. I usually know roughly how much is in there.

Here, the locally owned banks are worse than Chase in how they treat their individual customers.

And USAA is not really a bank in the same sense as all the other banks. They operate more like an old school credit union with their membership requirements. They also are not really for profit in the usual sense if I recall correctly. But yes, they are about as good a bank as you will ever find (and insurance company too).

That's the trick, really.  Find a CU or bank that isn't for-profit.  If all reinvestment goes back into the bank instead of dividends or a CEO's pocket, it'll likely be good.

Check their agreements and financials before you do this. All not-for-profits are not equal.

Definitely check their financials - a couple of CUs I was looking into in Houston were bleeding money, and I decided against using them for that reason.

I've got a USAA account but I haven't looked at banking with them.  Do they have one of those deals where you can use other ATMs for free?  I switched to BofA from a smaller bank about a decade ago solely because I was tired of paying $2 every time I wanted to use one of their ubiquitous ATMs.

Yes.  They reimburse you for ATM fees, or at least did when I banked with them.  

I had to switch banks for everyday use for a couple of reasons.  


There were no membership requirements when I started my accounts there. 

USAA was originally Active duty and retired US military officers and their dependents, they opened it up to non-comissioned as well later and relaxed the rules on how closely related you had to be to open accounts. Do they let the general public open accounts there now?

I would have to assume so, since I would be considered "general public".  I'm not sure if it's still the same.  I opened my account around 10 years ago.  

I think the requirements now just pertain to their insurance products. 

*shakes head in wonder and amazement*

My banking experience from Norway:

• I didn't have a credit-card in Norway. I didn't need to build up some imaginary "credit-rating" to be able to get a loan.
• I had a debit-card, with a VISA-part on it. I did not separate between "debit-use" or "VISA-use". I swiped (swoop?) my card in shops, I entered my card-number and other relevant info when shopping online. No absurd fees for doing so.
• No absurd fees for withdrawing money from ATMs, no limited amount of withdrawals per month. Even so, I carried cash more and more seldom since there was no downside to just swiping my card wherever I went (also no limits on the amount of times I could do so), since just about everywhere had card-readers.
• I could use online banking to transfer money from my account to any other bank account in Norway, whether owned by a private person or a company, independently of whether they're using the same bank as me. The transfer would for the most part take place more or less instantaneously.
• I could use online banking to setup automatic payment of certain bills - and they would not go through unless there was actually money on my account, so no absurd overdraft fees.
  
• Cheques were an archaic, outdated system of money transfer that I last saw in the early 1990s, which was around the time when Norway collectively said "fuck this" and burned all cheque-books, to much cheering, hat-throwing and eating of freshly killed whale.

My more recent banking experience from Montreal, Canada:

• I apparently need credit-rating, so I can get a credit-card, which I can use to build up my credit-rating, as well as buy stuff online. Because it would be too damn hard to make a debit-card with VISA support.
• Banks arbitrarily approve or reject credit-card applications based on random factors such as time of day, the current weather outside, what the current terrorist-threat level is at, etc. We were a big bunch of people who moved over from Oslo together, and some have gotten rejected outright for not having any credit-rating, some have gotten credit-cards with $1000 limits, some with $5000 limits. Some needed letter of reference from their previous bank in a different country, some did not. Some needed letter of reference from employer, some did not. Same bank, people from same nationality/region in the world, applying at roughly the same time, working in the same company.
• Banks arbitrarily cancel credit-cards outright without as much as a phone-call to the customer if they have the tiniest bits of suspicion that something might not be right. Such as the customer withdrawing $500 from an ATM. While not cancelling the credit-cards for other people who've withdrawn much more, and more often.
• I can withdraw money from ATMs a limited amount of times per month, and pay hefty fees every time I do so. I can also only use my debit-card a limited amount of times per month, with hefty fees every time I do so.
• I CAN use online banking to pay bills - but only if the company I'm paying the bill to is in the list of companies approved by the bank. Also, apparently the advanced computer systems over here need a minimum of 5 days to transfer the money between accounts. Because that's hard.
• I can NOT transfer money to people who use other banks than mine. Unless they support some weird "transfer money by e-mail"-scheme. Which not all the banks do. As such, I can't pay my rent online, but have to time-travel back to the 1980s to get hold of paper cheques, which I then need to snail-mail. And after my landlady goes to the bank with said cheques, they'll be stuck in the system for up to a week for "processing reasons".

Up until coming here I had not even seen a cheque since the early 1990s, when Norway as a collective nation said "fuck this archaic system. It's slow and outdated" and dropped using them completely and instead went along with a much saner and easier system which actually benefits the people who use it.

Yes, yes. Norway = smaller country, less logistics involved, etc and so forth. Whatever, doesn't change the fact that banking (and cellphone service providers, not to mention internet service providers - which are completely different stories) suck donkey ass in Canada - and in the rest of Northern America as well, from what I've heard.

Capitalism rocks, right?

Swiped is correct.  Swoop is a bike that alien racers blow up in dramatic fashion.

ed: Because I missed this post.


Yes, the requirements are still there.  Service member or child of a service member.  They've been advertising USAA banking on the local radio for the last week so I listened just to be sure when I realized who it was.  I want my kids to use them, but they're ineligible.

I've had USAA for insurance since I started driving and switched to banking with them a year ago when I found out they had it.  Best banking experience of my life.  (Oh, you're transferring money from another account? We'll credit that to you right now, we trust it'll be there. No, you don't have to wait for us to hold it and gain interest for ourselves on the x-fer for 3 business days.  Fucking awesome.)

Too bad my kids won't be able to use 'em.

Ed#2
https://www.usaa.com/inet/ent_utils/McStaticPages?key=why_choose_usaa_eligibility_main&wa_ref=wcu_main_is_usaa_for_you

Looks like if you're the child of a member you can join for insurance, but ANYONE can join banking.  Their commercial is misleading and now I'm going to e-mail them as such.   I can't recommend them enough if anyone's thinking of switching banks.  The only bitch part is it's all online so you can't deposit cash on those rare instances you get it.

You CAN send cash in the deposit envelopes they will send you if you request them, but they don't recommend it.

I have not done anything with my USAA checking account in about 9 years since they refuse to give me anything but a Maestro Debit card which (unlike my VISA check card from Chase) I can't use like a credit card.

I did have my car loans through them, and my insurance is all through them though. One thing that was cool about my first car loan was that my dad cosigned it, so he could make payments on it online (which he did a couple times as a birthday present).

Really? Why won't they give you anything else?  I've got a Master Card debit card with 2% back on all purchases made with it and have had it since I opened the account.

I was with USAA long ago and they only offered the Maestro thing at the time to me as well. This was over a decade ago, though.

First, thank you for correcting me.  Moron doesn't apply to her.  Second, that is some crazy insane bureaucratic bullshit.

Credit cards are great, if you abuse the system. Rewards cards and store cards can net you some great deals, I usually get a few hundred bucks worth of stuff a year by timing purchases and using incentives. I channel everything through my amazon card and get good rewards from it, and contrary to what someone said about negatively impacting your credit, when I checked my credit this year, I was stunned how high it is. I do keep a couple extra cards that don't get a lot of use (mostly store cards for big purchases), so it keeps my balance vs available at a good ratio.

I have a debit card, but I never use it. Stuff like overdrafts (keep a cushion) and temp charges for gas and hotels, just not worth using.

I'm lucky to have two regional banks. I had one local, but they just sold out to a regional from New England...we're crossing our fingers on that one, as they hold my mortgage and have been an amazingly successful bank (which is why they were prime for buyout, of course).

I very rarely come close to overdrafting, but I have a line of credit attached to my checking account as a failsafe- if I overdraw, the bank automatically draws from the LoC to cover it. Paying a bit of interest beats getting beaten up by OD fees. Another option is to tie it to your savings account, and have that cover in case of an overdraft. But as has been said, the best way to do it is to bank with someone whose prime directive isn't 'screw everyone out of as much money as legally possible every chance we get'.

I do the exact same.  One that I use a lot, another I put about $20 a month on, and another that is for emergencies only and is never touched.  Every time I've gotten a loan the loan officer boggles at how good my credit score is.

Heh.

I don't have any of these problems with Bank of America.  It's really not that hard to keep track of your balance in a spreadsheet.

Financial institutions in general suck in the US; they're sharks on a scale usually reserved for law firms and recording agencies.  Trying to buy a house was pants on head retarded entirely due to the banks dicking around about whether they felt like a 20% down payment and co-signing relatives was sufficient for them to do me the favor of charging 6% interest for thirty years.

In the end, I just borrowed from the relatives and'm paying them 5% interest for thirty years, which was way more than the bank was paying them for that money, so everybody wins.  Except the banks.  Fuck them.

I have an email notification set up on my checking account to alert me if it ever drops under $100, and a credit card that I never ever use connected as overdraft protection, just in case.  I haven't overdrawn in a long time, and don't aim to start now.

And it's not that I don't appreciate banks in theory, or feel that I should receive a bunch of financial services for free.  It just really rubs me the wrong way that their entire model for profit seems to be based off of an engine of douchebaggery.  I'd feel better just paying a yearly fee and receiving a guarantee of honest treatment in return instead of getting "free" and having to tiptoe through a minefield if I don't want to get fucked.

This will probably need it's own thread in a few days, but for now it can sit here-

Stef and I are buying a house, after an exhaustive search we finally found a place we liked, went through like 9 fucking offer/counteroffer cycles with the buyer and finally got a signed contract.  We scan and email the contract and all banking info, 401k info, w2s, etc, etc over to the loan guy Sunday night.  We hear nothing until Thursday, when the loan disclosure docs show up, everything looks good.

Today stef gets an email from the 'document coordinator' or whatever that works for underwriting, emails her some forms to finish filling out and some random docs we need to send.

60% or so of whats on there is wrong.  Closing costs, fees, etc are completely different on two documents, they are requesting a 'gift' form to show that someone is giving us $3k to cover closing costs, except the seller is covering 95% of the closing costs and we've got enough in the bank to cover double what we're required.

As best we can figure, they filled out the paperwork with information that stef gave the loan guy on the phone almost 2 months ago, only looked at 1/2 of the actually contract, and ignored all of the financials that were submitted.

And people wonder why theres so many fucked up mortgages, heh.

When I was trying to get a mortgage, Bank of America was one of the banks I went to, because one of my friends mentioned having had a good experience with them for his house.  So I contact them and get a very nice lady, real helpful, who collects all of the pertinent information.

A couple days later, eight o-clock, middle of dinner, my phone rings.  A woman with a heavy accent informs me that she's from Bank of America and wants to discuss my mobile home purchase.  I explain to her that a: I'm not buying a mobile home, I'm buying a townhouse, and b: I'm in a restaurant and not near any of my paperwork to discuss with her.  This exact same scenario repeats three days later.  Same woman, still thinks I'm buying a mobile home, still calls at an unseemly late hour.

So I call the first lady back to find out what the hell is going on and she discovers that, despite one of their mortgage centers being in my town, I've been assigned to a mortgage center in California.  She promises to make some calls to see about getting my application transferred to the agents in my state.

A week after that, dinnertime, phone rings.  California woman is still very curious about my mobile home.  I just tell her that I'll call her back.

Two weeks later, I received a letter in the mail informing me that my loan application had been denied because I was trying to purchase a mobile home.

That's not that uncommon really. The hilarious loan questions I get because I'm their CPA...  :facepalm:

This would be a lot less sad if she didn't work for the same goddamn bank we were getting a mortgage through, you think that they would at least bother to read the goddamn contract.

Bank of America has excelled at douchebaggery since at least the early 90's when they were still North Carolina National Back and barely dreaming of taking their special brand of screw-the-little-guy regional.

Erm.. BoA started in California in 1929.  (Well, earlier, actually but that's when the BoA name was taken.)  What they did was bought-out NCNB and imported/ morphed their own brand of douche baggery to you.   Much like 5/3 and PNC have done via the latest banking crisis.

Actually, NCNB merged/bought it's way into becoming a regional player, changing its name to Nations Bank along the way, then bought Bank of America and assumed the name to turn into a national player.  While technically a merger, perhaps, the money (billions of dollars) went from Nations Bank to BoA shareholders, and the control all went from BoA to the former Nations Bank.

I know nothing about BoA's business practices prior to their merger with Nations Bank, but if they were a fraction as douchey then as now then the two were true kindred spirits.  Although, to be honest, BoA's policies and customer service seem significantly less evil now than they were, say, 5 years ago.  I'm not sure if they've actually gotten any nicer, if the financial crisis is squeezing their nuts enough to force some degree of civility, or if it's simply a matter of the rest of the industry having discoverd that greed (and contempt for small accounts/customers) is very profitable to the point where it's the new norm.

Official BofA history is relative: It depends on which state you're in, whatever bank they purchased to crack into that state is now the official original bank, as far as their official statements are concerned.  Having worked for a regional bank that BofA purchased before the NCNB "merger", I can assure you that the douchebaggery did not start with that transaction.

I also find it amusing that 3-4 years ago I was mocked for telling people to switch their personal banking to Credit Unions by some of the very same people now advising the move.  Credit Unions have no incentive to screw their customers, and until someone manages the repeal the last remaining vestige of Glass-Steagall, cannot be bought up by major banks (unlike the few remaining regional banks, which are merely waiting their turn).

--Dave

I would imagine there is still good money in making a bank with the intent of being bought out.

I don't remember anyone mocking you for suggesting it.  I do recall people asking about them.  I know your post 3-4 years ago is what first made me look into them for my local banking, because I didn't know anything about them at the time.

As I recall, mockery was involved, but I was so defensive over other things that were being debated at the time I may have been mixing them up.

Anyway, yes, if your personal banking is not with a Credit Union, you are providing the money for derivatives speculation by the trading desk of your bank, and getting screwed by fees to the bargain.  I'm not saying the roof will fall in tomorrow, but there's no reason *not* to move your money to a CU unless you're routinely moving hundreds of thousands of dollars around, and lots of reasons you should.

You want to get one that is covered by NCUA (the equivalent of FDIC, all Federal CU's and most state-chartered ones are) for the protection of your deposits, and there are various "shared branching" associations that are very useful.  My CU only has a dozen or so branches in the Austin area, but in almost every city there are CU's that are part of the same association, I can use their ATM's without fees, and make deposits/cash checks at their tellers, with *less* hassles and more liberal policies than with a national bank (for example, I have never had a problem getting them to verify a check and then make the funds available immediately, even for 5-figure checks drawn on out of state banks while at a "shared branch" of a different CU in a different state).

--Dave

EDIT: The reason CU's have no incentive to screw their depositors is that they are owned *by* their depositors, your deposits are an ownership stake in the cooperative and any profit has to be either lent out to members of the CU, or distributed to them as a dividend.

You're banking with a shitty bank. Also, don't apply for a lot of credit cards. The more card applications you submit, the worse your credit score gets. It's not an arbitrary system and it really depends on the card you applied for as a lot of them have a hidden "minimum" balance, especially on the higher tier platinum type cards.

As for it being easier in Norway, well, it's amazing what kind of changes come out of a banking crisis. We haven't gotten there yet, but it's not like you have to suffer one of the big 5 banks.

I have money/loans with both for various reasons. I do think if you can find a good full service credit union that they are a good place to bank, they just sometimes don't have the same reach as a big bank.

If you get your salary at the end of the month like most people do then you'd only have a positive balance if your savings already exceed your monthly salary. If you don't have any savings then you'd be in the red for the amount of money you earn. (At the start of the month your balance would be zero so you'd be at minus-your-salary at month's end, being at zero or more would mean that you have already saved at least as much as you are paid).

That's why your overdrafting limit is usually twice your monthly salary.

I don't want to sound like a eurofag here but it always strikes me as odd how behind the times the US banking services are even compared to eastern europe. It's easier to transfer money to Wladivostok that to San Franscisco.

The first time somebody told me that there is actually a "we write and post your checks each month to pay your recurring fees" omline service in the US I thought he was kidding because I simply couldn't believe that something as inane as that would still be fairly standard in 2010.

The issuing of eurocheques stopped in 2002, because nobody was using them anyway for quite some time.

So "banking in europe, how does it fucking work"?

Payment at a brick and mortar store can either be done in cash, which is the most common payment option regardless of price in most of europe. By credit card which is the least common option because of the high processing fees (2% - 4% disagio usually) Visa and Mastercard are asking or by eurocheque/maestro card (usually called ec-card) ec-cards work like credit cards but the fees are lower, the card offers more security features and the service is run by the european banks so the payment is actually withdrawn directly from your checking account at the time of payment (the PIN terminals connect to the transaction servers of the banks, which are interconnected). A store owner can also check your credit directly.

So usually every store (and every vending machine) accepts cash, most accept ec-cards (even most vending machines do) and the majority don't accept credit cards at all (or only if the bill exceeds a certain amount). So most people won't even own a credit card.

Cash withdrawals can be made at any ATM machine. If your bank owns the ATM it has to be free of charge, if another bank owns it they may ask for a transaction fee but the maximum amount is specified. The big banks however have come to an agreement that their customers may also use the ATMs of the other banks free of charge. In Germany this covers more than 10.000 ATM machines.

EC-card fees are so low, that many ticket/vending machines no longer accept cash (handling of the cash is more expensive than retrofitting the device with a PIN-pad and paying the fees).

My bank for example offers me a checking account with online banking option and overdraft, Visa- and ec-card free of charge and I can witthdraw money from any ATM in the european union without paying any transaction fees but you won't get any interest on your money as compensation. This level of service is quite common, at least in Germany. There are also no fixed overdraft fees instead you have to pay interest on the amount you are in the red. Interest is quite high but may not exceed 20% per year. It's usually less than 10% for smaller amounts and less than 15% for larger ones.

Recurring payments are usually done by bank transfer. You can transfer money from any bank to any other bank in the EU if you know the account number and bank identifier code which is usually printed on any bill or statement by the company, you can also set up bank transfers as standing orders with your bank (basically you tell your bank to transfer the same amount of money to the same account each month until you tell them to stop) and if you agree you can even allow companies to directly withdraw the amount from your account each month.

Most recurring payments will be made using the last option.

All of these options are usually free of charge with no transaction fees and even if there are any you usually don't pay them yourself because convenience is worth more to those companies than the fees. If the transfers are international however the banks usually ask for a nominal fee (usually less than $5).

In my setup my salary gets automatically transferred to my checking account each month. Most recurring payments are made by the companies directly withdrawing the fees from my account (this is true for phone and internet services, cable TV, insurances and even most magazine subscriptions, my rent is transferred to the account of my landlord by means of a standing bank transfer order and I can manage everything from the comfort of my own home.

I usually only pay cash when it's a small amount because it's quicker than using the card and entering the PIN but I could get by without using a single cent of real currency if I wanted to.

The only fee my bank asks for is an overdraft fee everything else is free of charge as long the money is only transferred in the EU.

This just means that the bank employee is retarded and doens't know how his/her own system works. Each credit rating company worth its salt offers two credit check modes:

Mode 1: Just give us the current credit rating of a certain customer so that we can offer them a rate
Mode 2: The customer just placed a mortgage with us please update his/her score

Only Mode 2 fucks with your rating, if your rating gets worse each time you ask for an offer your banks are shit and you should sue them. Every scoring company I know also has means to dispute your score if you feel it is wrong.

Sounds like she was retarded then, along with most of the other bank employees in the area (and no, that isn't green I think you're probably right). Either that or she failed to mention these were particularly stupid customers.

I do have a friend however that was having trouble getting a phone line setup since apparently it required a credit check (I believe the phone line was what he was trying to do, he was complaining of a lack of internet) but was repeatedly refused since setting it up would require a credit check (the last tenant having run off to China and leaving a lot of unpaid bills) they thought he'd fail and that would mean his credit rating would be hurt and he wouldn't be able to get the phone line. That whole story just sounded :facepalm: though, especially since when he was eventually able to get the check done everything else went smoothly. I think most people in the UK just don't really understand credit rating though.

The truth points to itself.