i just got hit with > $1000 worth of overdraft fees, yes thats right
how? went over by accident, then a bunch of little charges i made
got returned, and they kept resubmitting it over and over until they racked up all these fees

ive talked to phone & the branch and they said they wont give me a dime back
im with Bank of America,
has anyone had success getting these charges given back to you?

1/25/2008 12:27:49 PM

self pwnt

1/25/2008 12:30:03 PM

gahdamn

1/25/2008 12:30:42 PM

BoA strikes again!

i'm not with BoA, but you can get the charges reversed no matter what bank you are with.

1/25/2008 12:31:54 PM

how long did it take for you to go over the $500 and $1000 mark

1/25/2008 12:32:05 PM

gotta love that fee income

banks gotta make money somewhere if it's not gonna be on mortgages

1/25/2008 12:34:03 PM

http://www.ncsecu.org

1/25/2008 12:34:43 PM

total pwnage

you should keep a better eye on what's in your account. financial responsibility, i think is what it's called.

but that still sucks, and if you bitch enough they should refund most of your money.

1/25/2008 12:35:07 PM

yeah, i have two accounts and i messed up and used the wrong one

but i was thinking of going in there and saying im closing my account
when they ask why i'd say, "Im switching to the credit union cause they dont have fees"

i may go that route

1/25/2008 12:37:46 PM

i had a problem with wachovia like this, albeit on a much smaller scale (~$175)

where basicallly, i was down to around 50 bucks in my account, and i had a bunch of pending charges that were pending on the day before i got paid, but then overnight between that day and payday, they all cleared, even though they still showed up as pending the day before (and up until midnight that night)....so while i was pissed because normally they always put in deposits before taking out money, the lady said that they had cleared the day before but the charges didnt show up as cleared until the next day...so i got hit for about 5 or 6 charges on like 5-10 dollar purchases...super gay

should i have probably kept a better track of my purchases and balanced my account? yes. but it was still shady the way the transaction occurred, and unfortunately they would only give me back 50% of my charges because it was the first time it had happened to me. i'm usually fairly good with money so i never had overdraft protection on this account...lesson learned

so im now in the process of switching my banking over to ING Direct

1/25/2008 12:38:54 PM

ahahahahahah, damn dude, were you paying attention at all to your shit?

u sure they won't refund any of it, that's pretty nuts. i've gotten fees like that dropped before, not from boa though.

[Edited on January 25, 2008 at 12:44 PM. Reason : efw]

1/25/2008 12:42:08 PM

bitching does wonders...it might take quite a bit of it in this case tho.

1/25/2008 12:51:18 PM

You do realize you can tie a savings account to the checking account or gain a line of credit for this very thing, right?

1/25/2008 1:12:54 PM

interesting note - they won't let you tie a checking account to a checking account, but will a savings or other account to a checking account.

I'm one who checks my balance daily but I also travel for work and sometimes miss a day or two, so I inquired about this as I have spending money in one checking account and bills in the other.

I'm seriously considering switching one or both accounts to ING just to avoid this type of thing in advance.

I'd (of course) keep one of the BoA accounts active in case I needed to spontaneously write a check (like that ever happens)

1/25/2008 1:30:06 PM

Quote :

"total pwnage you should keep a better eye on what's in your account. financial responsibility, i think is what it's called. but that still sucks, and if you bitch enough they should refund most of your money."

Also, before you go in trying to get your refund, read up on how to do it most effectively on consumerist.com

1/25/2008 1:35:35 PM

http://www.ncsecu.org

$0.50 charge for overdrafts and they move money from your savings/money market account for you so it doesn't happen on the next transaction. It's saved me a couple times.

1/25/2008 1:40:56 PM

usually when i get crazy overdraft fees i call and beg wachovia to help me out, and they usually come through. they wont take all the overdraft fees back, but they'll take out one or two. kinda crazy they wont help you out at least a little bit. so bank of america pretty much sucks.

1/25/2008 1:47:10 PM

this thread reminded me to call them back and bitch some more

im going to keep calling till i get a woman...they're usually easier to deal with on this stuff

1/25/2008 1:54:19 PM

I racked up $600 or so in overdraft fees a few months ago due to a check not clearing that I thought had cleared.

I had like 15-20 little purchases and got hit with fees for each of them.

I managed to get half of it dropped, but I still had to pay like $300.....

This was with BB&T.

I immediately signed up for a line of credit and linked my savings account.

[Edited on January 25, 2008 at 2:00 PM. Reason : .]

1/25/2008 1:59:41 PM

wow, haha

i just told wachovia that i was going to switch to a bank with better terms if i couldnt get this resolved and the lady says:

"that's fine"

haha wtg wachovia

1/25/2008 2:01:21 PM

she was reading a preformed response

you don't think she just came up with the "fine, fuck you" on her own

1/25/2008 2:02:17 PM

no, she was just so callous about it

it was hilarious

it's like how i would break up with a g/f


im on hold for the next level up...i just want to make sure that im clear in understanding that they're totally cool with losing a customer who uses them as a primary checking account and savings over $175



[Edited on January 25, 2008 at 2:04 PM. Reason : .]

1/25/2008 2:03:16 PM

I'm gonna call them now and tell them "im closing my account"

I hope to god they try to stop me cause i really dont wanna close it,

if they dont try to stop me, i may just pull the phone cord out or something

1/25/2008 2:04:29 PM

wachovia is pretty good about taking them away. you still end up having to pay a little but. but paying $100 instead of like $500 is good. it helps if you don't bitch though. you have to go in with a sob story instead of a story about how ridiculous overdraft fees are. i usually go in and throw out the whole i'm a poor college student thing and i didn't understand that my acct would over draw and that i would get charged everytime. i've really been trying hard to manage my money but i guess i haven't learned yet. blah blah blah. then they take most of them away and give a small lecture

1/25/2008 2:04:37 PM

that doesnt work when youre 5 years removed from college

the responsibility for my error is most definitely my fault, but you're dumb if you dont fight the charges anyways

1/25/2008 2:13:02 PM

^ yea i guess. but i'm not in college anymore either but i still just throw it out there. i look like i am 18 though. and it helps to be a girl too probably...i can usually work up some tears.

1/25/2008 2:14:45 PM

well that was a big FAIL

they didnt give a crap that i was cancelling, no trying to talk me out of it
luckily i had an excuse not to actually cancel it right now, this sucks

1/25/2008 2:16:49 PM

You certainly bear responsibility to make sure that you have the funds in your account to cover your obligations, but I am sure that there is no shortage of assholes around to beat that dead horse.

I'd be curious to know if the charges were for debit card transactions or for returned checks?

If the charges were for debit card transactions, I think that you should be able to successfully argue that they share responsibility for authorizing the transactions at the point of sale when the purchase is made.

When they authorized each of those transactions when there were no funds in the account to cover them, they effectively extended a line of credit to you. What's more, when you calculate the APR for each $35 fee against each of those charges, you'll probably find that they are nailing you 3 and 4 digit percentage interest.

There was an article about this kind of thing in USA Today about a month ago and it identified BofA as one of the chief culprits. They do this intentionally to increase revenue and what they have done to you is one of the examples that they mentioned. Another thing that they mentioned about BofA is that instead of posting items in the order that they came into the system chronologically, they instead post them from largest to smallest dollar amount. This way, if there aren't enough funds in your account, more items will show as NSF and they'll collect $35 for each one.

If you can't make your case to BofA and if you're a student, go to student legal. I hope that they would be able to assist.

[Edited on January 25, 2008 at 2:23 PM. Reason : .]

1/25/2008 2:19:23 PM

well in my instance

as they commonly do

they ordered the charges from largest to smallest

so while i got hit for 5 transactions, i was really only overdrawn on one of them....but by ordering them largest to smallest, the largest cleared my account and then made me overdrawn 4 more times

its pretty much industry standard but its so ghey

1/25/2008 2:21:10 PM

we're going on 35 minutes of phone time

45!

so this is the final arbiter as far as cust. service goes..

glad this thread was made...gave me something to do at work for the last hour

we'll see what happens

[Edited on January 25, 2008 at 2:39 PM. Reason : !]

1/25/2008 2:27:18 PM

I'm 0 for 2

1/25/2008 2:50:53 PM

no longer with wachovia!

1/25/2008 2:54:20 PM

what happened with the fees?

1/25/2008 3:02:41 PM

i got all the way up the CSR chain and in their sweetest southern drawl ever, told me they would rather have $175 than my business

she even told me that the reason they do the biggest--->smallest "scam" is because "we did a survey & customers prefer it that way"

not

"we want as much of your money as possible"

so im throwing the peace sign

1/25/2008 3:04:13 PM

thats it im switching to Wachovia, errr, credit union

1/25/2008 4:37:35 PM

I don't know about BofA but Wachovia will retroactively rearrange your charges in order to hit you with as many overdraft fees as possible, for example:

Say you have $100 in your account, over the course of several days you make purchases of $10, $5, $1, $10, $20, and then $101 (in that order), well technically you only overdrafted once when you made the last purchase of $101 but as soon as you overdraft Wachovia will rearrange the charges in order from highest to lowest regardless of the order in which they were made (even if the earlier, smaller chargers have already shown up as cleared days earlier) that way the first charge of $101 overdrafts you and then they can hit you again with an overdraft fee for each of the smaller charges......it's a dirty trick

Just saw that you obviously already noticed this

[Edited on January 25, 2008 at 4:51 PM. Reason : ]

1/25/2008 4:48:28 PM

Don't ever do online bill payments with BoA, the people you're paying never take the money out right away, making it hard to keep track of your balance, and the payment doesn't show up on the bank's system until later, and then you suddenly find yourself short of funds when people do start processing your online payments. I'm sending money orders for my bills from now on, BoA's overdraft charges are fuckin' crazy.

1/25/2008 5:15:23 PM

BOA & Wachovia haven't been making much money because of the mortgage crisis

you're likely not going to get all the charges taken off

you might be more successful if you put on some nice clothes, brush your hair and go into a branch with print outs and ask to speak with someone. present the facts, not too much personal detail. be professional and polite. you'd be surprised how much you can get for just asking, being nice and looking presentable.

1/25/2008 5:50:06 PM

Quote :

"$0.50 charge for overdrafts and they move money from your savings/money market account for you so it doesn't happen on the next transaction. It's saved me a couple times."

Overdraft charge at SECU is $12.00. An overdraft protection transfer costs $0.50.

Overdraft protection is optional.

Oh, and fuck BoA. And Wachovia while you're at it. And try very very hard to get that resolved before they try to take you to court and assfuck you for those overdrafts.

1/25/2008 5:55:01 PM

had this happen once- Find a corporate directory, call the office of the V.P., Speak to anyone in the office including secretaries, tell them their customer services reps have shit on you, get ur money back in full-

I got hit with about $600 in overdrafts with BOA because they cleared a rent check as opposed to clearing the 15 purchases before it and bouncing the check- They refunded me all the over drafts and gave me a $40 credit for the hassle-

Good luck

1/25/2008 6:00:22 PM

This is why you should all go to BB&T, or any other bank that offers overdraft protection via a linked line of credit.

The whole overdraft issue is complete bullshit, and I HATE BoA for it. Wachovia isn't much better. The smaller the bank (BB&T, SECU), the better chance you have of getting charges reversed.

lafta: If you really want to stick it to them, you can play the bankruptcy barter. Call the bank reps and tell them that because of the charges you will be filing for personal bankruptcy and closing your account. That means they get 0 money and lose your account. That's about the only recourse you have, unfortunately.

Also, you should call the local news station (5 on your side) and tell them about it. The whole predatory clearing practice (largest to smallest transaction) is something consumer watchdogs have been all over in recent years. They may just eat it up for air time.

[Edited on January 25, 2008 at 6:05 PM. Reason : .]

1/25/2008 6:04:15 PM

Quote :

"you might be more successful if you put on some nice clothes, brush your hair and go into a branch with print outs and ask to speak with someone. present the facts, not too much personal detail. be professional and polite. you'd be surprised how much you can get for just asking, being nice and looking presentable."

you could probably ask a pile of cash and get it

1/25/2008 6:12:44 PM

$1,000 is outrageous.

I still don't understand why you suckers use debit cards.

They are flat out designed to accrue as many overdraft fees as humanly possible.

Grow up and get a credit card, debit cards are for suckers plain and simple.

Interest free 30 day loan >>>> fee scam


Plus if you pay late on a credit card they'll almost always refund you the fee (although not always the finance charge).

1/25/2008 6:20:24 PM

Quote :

"Don't ever do online bill payments with BoA, the people you're paying never take the money out right away, making it hard to keep track of your balance, and the payment doesn't show up on the bank's system until later, and then you suddenly find yourself short of funds when people do start processing your online payments. I'm sending money orders for my bills from now on, BoA's overdraft charges are fuckin' crazy."

do you think that an online bill payment should be automatically withdrawn from you account the day the check is mailed out? it's deducted from your account when the company the check is sent to deposits it....

1/25/2008 6:23:01 PM

When i mail online checks to my parents it is deducted before they recieve the check.

Data Point - Wachovia

[Edited on January 25, 2008 at 6:38 PM. Reason : .]

1/25/2008 6:37:51 PM

Quote :

"Grow up and get a credit card, debit cards are for suckers plain and simple. Interest free 30 day loan >>>> fee scam Plus if you pay late on a credit card they'll almost always refund you the fee (although not always the finance charge)."

Seriously.

^is right. Yet another reason why the offer it in the first place, it's another chance to screw over their customers for fees.

[Edited on January 25, 2008 at 8:11 PM. Reason : . ]

1/25/2008 8:10:42 PM

fuck BOA, and yes i know this was the OPs own fault, but still...

WAMU rapes me every once in a while, their fee is $32 and they calculate it in a pretty interesting manner so that they come out making a pretty decent chunk of change if you happen to slip up

1/25/2008 8:38:58 PM

Isn't some wachovia executive a big supporter of the college of management?

1/25/2008 8:49:08 PM

jesus christ, I had a credit card when I was 18. maybe you should look into it.

then again, they don't like handing them out to people who are bad about their spending habits. just kidding, they do.

1/25/2008 8:50:09 PM

do credit cards improve your credit score?

1/25/2008 9:09:44 PM