Republicans Vote to Let Banks Screw Over Working Americans
Senate Republicans voted 52-48 to advance a repeal of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule capping bank and credit union overdraft fees at $5.
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I remember when I was living with my head barely above poverty in my 20s. All the banks had $30 overdraft fees (probably equivalent of $50 with inflation) that would be charged for every offense.
So if you weren't paying perfect attention to your accounts balance and or got hit by an unexpected charge you were completely fucked. Then when my paycheck lands, I'm already $30-90 under the water for no reason. And then I'm that far below for that entire week making it far more likely I'd get hit with that charge again by the end of this week.
The bank even refused to even turn overdraft off and just refuse charges. I spent many periods of months or years paying my bank like $200/mo for no reason other than I couldn't get out from under these charges.
Fuck banks.
Not only would they hit you for $30 a pop, they would reorder the charges to maximise the number of hits. If say, your paycheck cleared a day late, pushing it to Monday or something dumb like that —when the mortgage payment that came through Monday morning would get processed first, then the bar bill from Friday night and the gas up on Saturday afternoon would get rung in all before the late deposit so they could ding you 3 times instead of 1.
My personal favorite was M&T bank (you scumbag fucking pieces of shit) right out of college, when I was barely covering my expenses, decided that a check I wrote for student loans was going to drop my account too low (I would have had about $4 left in an account with no required minimum balance) so cancelled it without even talking to me.
They hit me with a cancelled check fee from the bank and from the servicer which they then deducted before crediting me the cancelled check to hit me with two overdrafts, which with the extra overdrafts caused a third due to reordering. Total was about $150 in fees for writing a check I HAD THE MONEY FOR . And then, to add insult to injury, lost me my on time payments interest rate deduction forever which probably cost me a few thousand dollars more over the decade or so it took me to pay the loans off.
Sounds like a small claims court case or something. Abhorrent.
And back then the banks would re-order your transactions to maximize fees. So if you had 180 bucks in your account and you had pending transactions that were 3, 6, 10, 15, 5, and 165, the would change the processing order to 165, 15, 10, 6, 5, 3. That way instead of one overdraft fee you be charged four overdraft fees.
I had a paycheck bounce once. Bank of America retroactively applied a $30 fee to every transaction I had made in the three days since depositing it. My balance went from like $800 to -$2000 instantly.
I know your pain. Around ~2008 I made a check deposit and later that day checked my balance at the atm to see that I had a positive balance that I had printed off. That evening and the following day I proceeded to do 7 or more transactions. The following day after that I got notified that I was being hit with multiple overdraft fees. Logically I went to the bank the next day around 4pm, thinking they would work with me since I had documentation from their ATM saying I had a positive balance. They said they couldnt do anything for me locally and had to contact the branch I opened my account with. We contacted that branch but because they were one timezone over they said they couldn't help me until the next day as they were closing and "oh, yeah several more overdraft charges are about too hit the account." The next day I contact them and they proceed to tell me they can only reverse one charge and I had also accrued a late fee because I hadn't payed any of the overdraft fees off yet.
When everything was said and done I had paid over $450 in fees. Contacting my bank to see if they'd work with me only saved me $2.00 because the late fee was that much lower than another overdraft fee.
In 2009-2011 sometime I got contacted by a law firm as that bank was facing a class-action lawsuit for intentionally prioritizing debits over credits but I had since thrown away my documentation so I didn't join. -To this day it blows my mind that a bank can telll a client that they have a specific positive balance and yet can still rip them off under the guise of "overdraft protection"
They call it "protection" because it's fuckin' racketeering by any other standard!
Had a friend back in similar age area, they went one evening, "I'm going to the ATM to take out $20 so I have money for tomorrow before the overdraft I'm already going to get breaks my debit card."
I also had similar overdraft hell story when I was multi-overdrafted rent was entering past due and was on the verge of being homeless waiting for my next paycheck to stay afloat, drove home from work with the engine misfiring nearly dead out of fuel. Went home and scraped a "rare" (like an old quarter or penny, nothing fancy, one of those odd things family gives you) coin jar for enough money to buy a couple gallons of gas and food for my pet.
Wouldn't wish that dogshit on anyone, it is literally criminal greed that can destroy a person in under a week.
I did that too. Make sure you withdraw the max you can if you know the overdraft is gonna hit. Then you at least have some cash until payday.
Dark days...
The way you get out is cancel your bank account a receive paper checks from your job. Then you take those checks to a service that exchanges it for cash. Yes there is a fee but it beats paying $50/week in Overdraft fees
Then you lose all access to the Visa/MasterCard network which is basically required for most bills.
Or worse, you risk getting robbed of your whole check by your roommates friend.
Life without a bank account was hard then. Probably harder now.
Go to Walmart and buy a visa gift card. They max out at $500 which is plenty. You’d pay for it in cash.
They didn't exist at the time of my story. But also, I've had money swallowed by them since then, and they aren't reliable for recurring bills. There's some other weird restrictions and fees on them as well.
So still not a replacement for a bank account. Stop acting like living without one is an easy thing.
It’s not easy. Living in poverty is never easy. However losing $150/mo on fees is detrimental to anyone. You have to pick your poison on these things. I’ve been there and I acknowledge it isn’t easy.