Banks = Loan Sharks

Sunny here.

I read an interesting story on MSNBC that got my blood boiling because I've been there within the last two years. If you go to that story about bank overdraft fees, you may or may not see my comments (edited here for context) on their blog, but they weren't published when I passed this on to you (time delay; nothing unusual). Having gone through this crap with one particular bank, I felt I had to respond.

I'm shocked by how many are so clueless as to what happens to bank and credit card customers regarding fees, interest rate hikes, etc. Many people who have gotten screwed aren't whiners who don't know how to keep track of their accounts. And they're not necessarily victims of identity theft either.

I started a new account closer to a home I bought. I had a bank account (in good standing) with another bank for more than six years at that point, but it was a much farther drive to their nearest branch once I'd moved, and I didn't want to close my old account right away. I was told at my new, closer-to-home bank that I had overdraft protection of $400 with no fees.

Not long after, while I was trying to sort out my two bank accounts, I got $40 out of the ATM at my new bank. I was overdrawn at that point and didn't realize it. The ATM didn't warn me that they were charging $25 for the transaction, seeing as how I was overdrawn (which they knew at this point; I found out later); it just said I was being charged a $1.00 fee like always. More than 10 days after that withdrawal, I got five $25 overdraft fees within two days, including one for the ATM withdrawal. I called the bank and said the reason I asked for overdraft protection is so I WOULDN'T be charged fees if I went over, especially while I was sorting out my accounts. They said I did have overdraft protection but that they charged $25 per transaction even under the $400 limit. HUH???? So WHAT'S THE POINT of overdraft protection? WHY would I pay $125 in overdraft fees for a total of five transactions that equaled $162 (including $40 at an ATM for cash) if I thought I was going to be charged fees in the first place? I'd have made just ONE transaction at $162 and had ONE $25 fee if I really knew what the heck was going on.

So all you people telling the rest of us to take responsibility and quit whining, how about asking YOUR financial institutions to remember what customer service is about (once upon a time, they worked with you whether you were a Rockefeller or a dirt farmer) and to provide truthful responses about fees and not lie to your face or print everything in such small font that no reasonable person can/won't read it? My "New Accounts" lady flat out said that there were no fees under my $400 overdraft protection, but the assholes up the line said I should have read the small-type, 20-page booklet with a magnifying glass and figured out that there were fees. WRONG! Why should you have to have a lawyer to open a bank account?

I'm no longer a customer of this bank, and I made every effort to work it out with them. I obviously owed the $162 in actual transactions, which I had no problem with, but I refused to pay the $125 in overdraft fees. After multiple phone calls over several days to higher and higher levels of people, when they wouldn't back down, I finally said I'd pay all but one of the overdraft fees (even though I argued vehemently), which was the $25 fee for the ATM withdrawal. Again, they refused to work with me. I finally told them that their customer service sucked, that they were missing out on a potentially very good customer, and I moved all monies back to my old, but thankfully still-existing, account without ever paying them their damn fees. Oh well. Funny how they haven't pursued me for their $125 though.