They called it the “$39 cup of coffee.” At many banks, customers were automatically — often unwittingly — enrolled in overdraft programs that would permit debit purchases to go through even if it would overdraw their account, to the tune of up to $35 a pop. But a year and a half after new Federal Reserve rules kicked in to protect consumers from these automatic fees, we still forked over a collective $29.5 billion in overdraft charges for the year. What went wrong? Banks pocketed some serious cash from overdraft fees, according to research company Moebs $ervices, Inc. A decade ago, these fees were a $23 billion business. But once banks realized the magnitude of this revenue stream, they started pushing the envelope. In 2009, overdraft fee revenue hit an all-time high of $37.1 billion.
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6 comments:
People are irresponsible. Don't blame the banks. Your account, your responsibility.
Not all overdraft issues are due to irresponsibiity..sometimes we just make a stupid mistake but i have noticed that with my bank that if you have for example 50.00 in your account and two transactions that total more than that they will take the biggest one first which creates an overdraft and then the second one that was smaller will also overdraft. so two overdraft charges when it could have been one if they had taken the little one first then the larger one..they say that is policy...just a way to double their fee...they would be made to take the checks in order that they come in not the order they want...
11:16
if you kept track of how much money you had in your account and did not spend more than that then you would have no overdraft fees period. why should the bank finance your purchases for free??
If you don't spend more than you have, you don't incur overdraft charges, plain and simple!
No need to try and blame the bank. It was YOUR wrong doing. You spent more than you had.
Banks are getting away with murder on this. Any Credit Card will be declined when the limit is gone over.... banks don't stop spending when your debit/credit card "goes over", and they charge each transaction with an overdraft... you saw the reason...30 billion dollars. The insult to injury is that the bank does not notify you, or stop purchases on the cards for days.
WHY? Not because they lack the technology or ability to (clearly this can be done, it is being done now on credit cards).... the only reason it is done is to hammer their customers with extortive fees. Oh, they'll be quick to try to sell you "overdraft" protection, but why? You saw it... 30 billion dollars, not to mention fees in overdraft protection.
I know this because my wife's card information was stolen, and our bank account was fraudulently overdrawn by over 10K.... on purchases of jewelry on the other side of the country. We kept on our daily lives without ANY notification until I went to pay bills online almost a week later. THOUSANDS of dollars in overdraft fees.. that the bank would not credit, or fix, for over a week. During this time we needed to pay bills and buy food, none of this we could do. Now our bills would be payed late, with interest and late fees (costing more money), and hurt our credit rating with slow pays.
This is an outrage. Banks should put stop payments on Debit/Credit cards just like standard Credit cards do. There is no reason they can't, and the only reason they don't is to steal money from us!
This is a bigger issue than "poor finance management". This is an issue of banks sticking it to the public... I'm not in favor of excessive government regulation of commerce... but this is one thing I would support our government in getting involved in.
11:49 Let me make this clear..I dont deliberately overdraw my account..I do know what is in my checking account as that is the only place i have money as I own no credit cards at all...But this particular time it was not my fault..our payroll deposits were not put in and a automatic scheduled payment was to be taken out..that I could not stop..So again not all people are irresponsible and overdraw their account and make purchases on the banks expense...However in my situation the bank wouldnt even work with me on refunding the fees even though it was a payroll situation...soooo who won...the Bank and i lost 70.00 of my paycheck that week when it finally did get posted...
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