How to Beat the Bank

I learned about the overdraft fee the "hard" way. I worked at the bank before and never had problems with going overdrawn before. Also never heard people complaining about being charged for going "overdrawn", Until I moved to the States and saw that I was being charged to just go over by a couple of dollars. On top of that I got a mail saying that I went over, and got also charged with $35. I was like "are you kidding me?"

Then again where I come from your card is only for ATM withdraws and pin in stores. Secondly it would never let me get money out of the ATM that went over what I have in my bank account, nor pin what I don't have.
Last but not least, my bank never charged me if I went just a little over, because I have the account and I worked so money gets back in the next month and it gets taken off (what ever or little I went over).

I couldn't believe it when I was being charge for going over, what the heck? I mean it wasn't like I was going over $100 or more.

So unfair to be charged for going over. Grrr but then again that's how banks make money I guess.

I like though that Karney challenged the system. Kuddos!!!

I appreciate it.

GREAT VIDEO. I've used Small Claims Court filings to solve a lot of my problems with the major banks, especially relating to Identity Theft they didn't wish to resolve.

While many people would consider this cheating- it's not. Banks will take you to Court for the same reasons.

This is a great example of Capitalism, and how Contract/Tort law can be used to bring about changes without unnecessary "laws" and regulations.

Awesome pod!

I should have done that. Last year B of A charged me over $500 in overdraft fees :(

excellent. thank you for your excellent pod!

Awesome! Thanks for posting.

Great pod, I wish I would have done the same. Wells Fargo got us for about $1000. The kicker was we had overdraft protection tied to our savings. There was plenty of money in the savings account but they still charged us a overdraft fee. What was really bad was on a few occasions it was the overdraft fee that caused the overdraft. So then we closed the account and opened one with BofA. And guess what they play the same game. And for all this I am paying them $7.50 a month for a checking account. After all this I gave up and now I try to pay cash for things, but I still have to have a darn checking account.

Awesome pod!

Overdraft fees really are ridiculous, and it was neat to see an exploration of the topic. And I like how we see it through the eyes and experiences of our main character.

Nader's last sound bite is really interesting; I wonder if what the fallout would be if what he's hypothesizing actually happened.

I have found that, when you feel wronged, it is ALWAYS worth filing a complaint. Most of the time, the Attorney General's office of my state contacts the offending party on my behalf (due to my latest filing, I have a new Alienware laptop on the way because a spam e-mail message said I had "won"). In the case of a bank, a state banking authority may be the place to complain...

Just got a few NSFs in one day because I received a check which my bank acknowledged at 9 am but it wasn't available that day until 5 pm. Between 9a and 5p my student loan payment was automatically deducted.
That was a very informative pod and I am going to give it a try. I'll pass the information along to others also.

Great Pod!! I only wish i knew that about 2 years ago!

this pod was great! i did change my bank from citizens free checking acount to a credit union about four months ago. good work karney!

Great Pod! Overdraft fees are the bain of my existence!
Especially last spring when I got a $600 overdraft fee. I kept using my debit card when I was already overdrawn and it kept working putting me way over my limit. The best part was that all of the charges went through on the same day. I contacted the head of my bank (with the help of my uncle) and they took off all the overdraft fees so I owed them only $50.

Yay beating the system!

Credit card companies do this too. Its simple: They realized that they weren't making any money by declining transactions.

Brilliant. Overdraft fees seem like a completely non-visual story but you told it so well, without many abstractions! Good call putting yourself in this pod, it was definitely appropriate. And I liked the tone, at first I wasn't sure if this was completely satirical, but then you focused the story and enlightened the viewer on this common, but not always understood, issue. Great interviews too. You also handled the phone calls very well by consolidating and repeating the conversation yourself and getting around any legal ramifications. Awesome job!

Great pod. Who knew?!

Awesome pod. Well done. I paid so many of those! Keep up the good job exposing the wealth of company's.

A similar thing happened to me about a month ago. My husband and I have three accounts with our bank, two personal and one business. I've have a relationship with our bank for over ten years, and during that time none of the accounts I've managed had ever gone into the red. With a longtime track record of being a model customer, I was therefore very upset when the bank chose to penalize me when a snafu occurred.

One of our checks was accidentally deposited into the wrong account, which caused it to go overdrawn when checks we had written cleared. Even though we had more than enough money to cover the checks over the three accounts we had with the bank, the bank decided to return three checks, which, if they had cleared would have created an overdraft of less than $250. The bank then charged us $36 per check for the privilege of refusing to honor them. In addition, we faced check return and late payment fees from our car insurance, phone and credit card companies because of the bank's actions.

I was particularly upset that the bank hadn't bothered to call me (which they did regularly to confirm other transactions), or taken my highly responsible banking record into account before they decided to bounce the checks. Had they called, the situation could have been resolved instantly with a transfer between accounts. Instead, it seems to me, the bank saw an opportunity to make a quick buck ($108 actually) and took it, charging me fees, and putting my good credit, and car insurance policy, at risk in the process.

My initial complaints fell on officious and intransigent ears. The bank refused to refund the charges, insisting that they "couldn't" rather then "wouldn't" do it. Luckily for me, they'd erroneously mailed someone else's overdraft notice in the same envelope as mine, so with this as leverage, I agreed to do the right thing and hand over "John Doe's" letter on condition that the bank did the right thing and rescinded my fees.

But the episode left a very bitter taste in my mouth, and got me thinking about those less fortunate than myself, for whom the system is particularly unfair. Just one of the three fees the bank had taken from my account, without my permission, was the equivalent to the best part of a day's pay for someone on minimum wage. Put the three together and it's well over half a week's salary for the hard working poor. How can that be fair?

With such sharp practices these banks are no better than loan sharks. And with the economy in crisis, such money generating policies are likely to increase as the banks desperately try to claw back the funds they've been forced to write off due to the mortgage fiasco we're in the midst of right now. Once again the consumer is paying (dearly) for the mistakes fat cat, big business has made.

So what can we do? Certainly it's all our responsibilities to refuse to take such treatment lying down. The banks are only able to charge such outrageous fees because on some level we allow them to get away with it. Next time you get an unfair charge, call the bank on it. You may be able to afford to eat it, but the person standing in line behind you might not, and, as a society, we stand or fall together. If one employee refuses to help, refuse to be brushed off. Ask to see their superior, and if they can't help, ask to see theirs. Threaten to close your account down and take your business elsewhere, and DO IT if they fail to offer an acceptable resolution.

If all else fails, take a leaf out of Hatch's playbook, and take your bank to small claims court. As Ralph Nader says, "If a million consumers filed a million small claims court actions a year against the banks, the banks would either try to abolish the small claims court or try to improve their performance." Perhaps it's our responsibility to put that theory to the test. Once we've knocked the banks into shape, my next raison d'être will be local councils and the parking fines they charge. Try paying those on a minimum wage!

Love this. Debt/money is a big issue for many people. While I support people being responsible with their money, I love that they gave you your money back. It shows you can correct mistakes peacefully with a bit of effort. Nice job.

how bout a follow up pod on how to beat the Cheques System. Once you are on the system (usually for being overdrawn) its near impossible to get off and equally difficult to find a bank who will allow you to open up an account...or so I heard.

Great Pod!

Bank of America is no better than Wells Fargo.

A few months ago, my bank BofA nailed me for about $150.00 in overdraft fees. What they did was when they post transactions to your account at midnight, the transaction affects your account the following business day - in this case, they applied the debit retroactively to the preceding day. The result was a snowball effect.

Remember - it is your lousy elected officials who allow the banks to use these sorts of Predatory practices to "legally" STEAL from us.

Wells Fargo nearly forced me into bankruptcy a few years back when my business was brand new - the most critical time of all. Wells Fargo instituted a plan to cause millions of people's accounts to be overdrawn. For about a month and a half, Wells Fargo bounced at least 4 items a week on my account.

Not yet understanding what was going on, and trying to be conscientious I withheld payments to creditors until I was certain I wasn't going to write them a bad check - thinking it was better to be late than to bounce it.

After about two months, Wells Fargo admitted to me they had been integrating a new operating system into the state in three sections. Where I was making the majority of my deposits was in section 3, and my home branch was in section 1 or 2, so as a result debits from my account were conveniently being posted before the credits each night. Then, together with the $29.00 overdraft fee for each more items went negative.

I wrote to the California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer about this situation - and his office wrote back and said thanks for sharing. What a joke. Obama said I was "bitter" - guess what Hilbillary and McCrain, he's right!

A trick the banks use when they are playing games to screw us out of money is to make the bank manager unavailable. In the two to three months this was going on, my Wells Fargo home branch went through three bank managers and most of the time, I was told the manager was sick, at a doctors appointment, on vacation, had been transfered or the branch didn't have a new manager yet.

Eventually with great effort thousands of dollars of income lost and time wasted dealing with Wells Fargo, the bank gave me a written apology, refunded over $1,000.00 in penalties (incurred $29.00 at a time) and overdraft fees and hit me on the back of the head with the door on my way out.

I sent Wells Fargo's letter to credit cards and other creditors who said they saw no reason to reverse the late and overdrawn fees I incurred from this debacle.

I will say, by far, I wasn't the only person affected when Wells Fargo pulled this stunt to cheat people out of their money. Unfortunately, most people don't do or say anything about it - perhaps thinking it's their fault, as I did initially.

Burn the Bank's in Hell!

I would have pursued a lawsuit against Wells Fargo, but with a brand new business and a brand new daughter, relocating my family to Los Angeles and becoming a victim of corrupt Bureau of Auto Repair employees Roderick E. Baca and John Nelson and other city officials in Los Angeles - collectively or one of them arranging me to receive death threats, it was the lest of my concerns.

And by the way, despite evidence of felony perjury and falsification of government documents (also a felony), none of the public employees or complicit people have been charged or prosecuted for their crimes - Ripusofficans at least one.

I bank at Bank of America. Yesterday I went into a branch to make a deposit to cover my medical coverage. My bank is in Washington State and I was making the deposit in San Fransisco Ca. I was told there would be a 7 day hold on several of the checks I deposited (why? NO solid reason other than the checks needed to be cleared first....although several non B of A checks cleared right away and gee I had deposited many many checks to this account while in California and usually have no problems) They told me they would pay the medical plan but indeed would assign a $35 overdraft fee to my account. IF my entire deposit had been accepted as it should have been I would have had more than I needed and no where near being overdrawn. Needless to say I am leaving Bank of America (apparently its really the Bank of the Separate States of America). I am sick of being robbed by B of A.