Courtesy, yea right!

I had a good chuckle while reading the article on the reson banking rule changes, especially now that customers have to opt in to get the "overdraft protection" from banks that they once extended to all customers as a courtesy. That is as big a bunch of crap as I have ever read. The way overdraft protection workds is this:

Let's say you wrote five checks, one for your car payment for $350.00, one to starbucks for $12.75, one for $60.00, for for $14.52 and one for $23.00. The five checks total $460.27 and you check book shows a balance of $461.00 so you think you are okay but are shocked to discover that a $1.00 fee had been attacked to your checking account when you used your ATM to purchase gas so you are 27 cents short of having enough to cover your checks.

Your bank charges $35.00 per bounched check and as hard as that wuill be for you to deal with it is something you will survive. All five checks show up at the bank at the same time and to your additional horror you discover you had made a mistake in your accounting and your balance was only $360.00. Still enough to cover four of the five checks.

The banks, explain later that they figured you would rather pay the larger account first, pays your car payment and bounces the four smaller checks. Actually, they didn't bounce them, they extended you the courtesy of overdraft protection. Because of this protection you now owe the bank 4 times $35.00 or $140.00 because they made a judgement call on your behalf and extended you a courtesy.

Now the bank wants you to sign up for the same rip off scheme they had been pulling on their customers for years.

Back when I was young, the banks paid the smaller checks first, and if you were a really good customer and the amount in the bank and the amount of the check were close in amount, the bank would pay it for you so you owed no one anything.

When I was it college I had to work and payday was Tuesdays and every Tuesday I deposited my paycheck. One day for whatever reason I had more checks outstanding than money in the bank but knowing that I deposited money on Tuesday, the bank paid my check on Monday and got their money back the next day. Today, that smae bank would have charged me as a struggling college student a $35.00 courtesy fee for that $150 mistake.

So when the bank offers you this overdraft courtesy, smiles sweetly and say Thanks but no thanks.