Be careful with debit cards

Be careful with debit cards

(snip)

DON'T USE DEBIT CARDS FOR GAS PURCHASES.
Even if you spend, say, $25, the bank may put a freeze on up to $100 for as many as three days. If other charges come through during that period, you may easily overdraw your balance.

DITTO WHEN BOOKING HOTELS OR CAR RENTALS.
They often put an immediate hold on your account for at least the entire amount of your stay or rental (plus other potential services, like the mini bar), even if you plan to settle the bill with another form of payment.

BEWARE MULTIPLE OVERDRAFT FEES.
Say you use your debit card for a $5 latte, a $25 dry cleaning bill and $100 worth of groceries. Later, you realize you had only $75 in your account. You may expect an overdraft fee for the last purchase. But, at the end of the day, banks often rearrange your daily purchases from largest to smallest. In that case, you'll get hit with overdraft fees for all three purchases.

Bottom line: Be sure you have a cushion in your account before making multiple debit card purchases.

http://www.usaweekend.com/08_issues/080629/080629thinksmart-money-debit-cards.html

OF 1999.


It used to be that by law the bank had to sort out the overdraft fees by arranging the checks that bounced out by processing the lowest amunt checks first if you insisted on it. But now that isn't so.

And it really burns me up - when they initially said for us to make the switch to debit - it was always told to us the consumers that "Hey debit cards work just like cash!"

Yeah, like in what period of history did my spending $ 35 CASH on gasoline result in the bank holding back $ 100 more than that as a "freeze."

And since "It is the same as cash" is always their mantra, the banks should be held to that standard.

I think that the banking industry and everyone connected with it is slime!

and did not understand, then, how they can charge overdraft fee several times a day. And the reason for all these fees is that the banks lost so much money on their bad loans, that they are looking to raise fees anyway they can.

Bottom line: Be sure you have a cushion in your account before making multiple debit card purchases.

Ya think?

:shrug:

can you point for the words or the sentence?

and I never debit more than what I have. Keeps things a lot simpler.

supposedly you could HAVE enough money but NOT REALLY - because a FREEZE on some of that amount was put into effect by a PREVIOUS PURCHASE

But they can put a freeze all they want if my balance is $21.50 and I get $20 worth of gas. I can't afford to rent a car or a hotel room so that part doesn't affect me.

You slide the debit card through the gas pump, they freeze, say $50, and the actual charge is $27. That extra $23 that they froze may not thaw for a couple of days...

I know exactly how much is in my bank account too - but when Bank of America began counting authorizations as actual withdrawels until the exact debit amount was posted ... I was charged 200 dollars in overdraft fees for 7 overdraft charges because they counted the authorization from the gas station for 100 dollars as an actual withdrawel, instead of the 15 dollars I put in the tank. My account was NEVER in the red .... not until the overdraft charges started coming.

Here's what went down....

I had 100 or so bucks left in checking two days before payday.
I got 15 bucks worth of gas... the station authorized my card for 100 bucks...
I spent another 6 bucks at the store
2 bucks for a coke at another store
30 dollars .... another store
and 3 other under 5 dollar purchases at other places...

Bank counted everything as an overdraft ... for 35 dollars a pop. Even though I had only spent about 70 bucks that weekend... thinking I had approximately 30 bucks left. My account was IN THE RED by 200 bucks when I checked it Monday afternoon. They debited the a 100 authorization which left me with nothing to spend the rest of the weekend. Even the 15 dollar actual purchase was charged an overdraft.

If they can get me they can get anyone. I have never bounced a check in my life, paid a bill late, or had my account in the red before and I've had a checking account for close to 30 years now. My actual statement ONLINE and the hard copy that was mailed never showed me in the red until the first overdraft charge.

I went to the bank asking for an explanation... they said they changed their policy in March/08 to include authorizations as purchases until the debt posted.

This is complete crap on their part because they NEVER had to pay out the 100 dollar authorization for my 15 dollar gas purchase.

They only waived two of the charges....

I now have overdraft protection that is tied to my savings account.

I repeat once again ... if they got ME... they can get anyone with this 'trick' .. scam.. bullshit.

for, say, gasoline purchase or reserving a hotel. I did not know about the $100 freeze on gasoline purchase. At least, with a regular credit card with unsecured credit, by the time I get the statement all the charges are correct. And I do pay the bill in full.

And, perhaps, it would be wise to carry, say, $20 in cash for the under $5.00 purchase.. (yes, I know. a 20/20 view after the fact).

Before I got married, I had several problems with my debit card from Citizens, exactly as the OP describes. I dropped them and my wife handles the bills now.

I had an entertaining fight with them a few months ago over this 'largest to smallest' nonsense. I went into a branch and made the branch manager phone them for me (which took 5 minutes of polite argument). They will decline to do this and hand you a card with the number on it or suchlike, your job is to keep pushing it back across the desk and just keep repeating yourself politely until they cave. Then you can get the people on the phone. When the manager tries to hand you the phone ask for it to go on speaker.

Your goal is to force the manager to get involved in the conversation. The reason is that the bank will never refund the charges to you as an individual, but a manager can bully them into doing so. And the people in the call centers are so inept that they'll frequently lie and/or make mistakes. You need to bring in copies of your online banking statements printed out from your computer and so on. Better yet, bring in a small recorder. The bank always records your phone calls, which means you automatically have permission to do the same thing.

So when they say they don't get transactions until midnight (for example), you look at your statement and read them out the time and date stamps on the transactions. Then ask them if the statement is correct or not. They'll even pretend to not know the difference between AM and PM - telling you transactions went through at '6 o clock' and trying to fool you into misremembering they took place in the morning. You get them to read stuff off their screen and you'll find that they're referring to a transaction that took place at 1800 hours, which is 6 in the evening. THEY WILL LIE TO YOU. The reason is that their bonuses are linked to the number of fees they impose/cancel.

Another thing when they pull this 'largest to smallest' trick on you...they try to suggest its only expenses but in fact they do that for deposits as well. so if you deposit $200 in cash and then spend $175 of it using your debit card, they'll try to charge you but (as long as you haven't actually spent money you don't own!) you can point out that since the deposit is larger than the spending it should have been booked first. And when they tell you that only the first $100 is available, that's not true for a cash deposit made during banking hours or through one of the newer machines that counts the cash for you.

***

Here's what's really happening, as I was told by a friendly bank manager who shall remain Nameless. Your Bank Inc. generally no longer owns the actual branch - that's owned by a separate company called Your Bank Branches Inc. The branches are entirely funded by fees, which is why they've got so high. All the profit booked from the sale of, say, a mortgage, some of which used to stay at the branch, now goes to the parent company. So, the balance sheet of the parent company looks healthier because all the branch overhead has been moved off it and all the profits from the same of financial products have been retained, and technically they can truthfully say that they don't profit from charging fees to customers - they just pass those fees on to the branch operations company which is a wholly owned subsidiary. It keeps both regulators and shareholders off their banks, while forcing the branch employees to lower their standards of service to the absolute minimum in order to retain their jobs. Generally they no longer want to help you with fees and computer errors because if you go into a branch and they reverse a fee, it comes out of their operating budget even if the fee was levied in error or is wildly excessive.

Not only are they raising ATM and overdraft fees but they are restructuring how debits are ordered so they can claim more overdraft fees and penalties. It's all part of the "poverty industry" where the powerful exploit the desperate.

to do what I need. Otherwise I do cash. I bank at a Credit Union and have not dealt with banks for years. I have a debit card but seldom use it. The CU is the way to go.

We had a savings account just set aside for a rainy day for 9 years or so. We never withdrew from it nor added to it. Recently we got a statement that if we didn't add or subtract to re-activate the account, the state was going to assume we were dead and they would confiscate it!

Unbelievable!