No doubt your bank will deny ever playing any of these games. But you can judge by your own experience. As banks merge and need to satisfy stockholders, they will smile to you but continue to raise profits and cut their loses by whatever means necessary.
- Some banks process charges
against your account every day BEFORE crediting your payments
and deposits. Let's
say that on one day, they will process four checks against your
account: A housepayment for $1,500; a carpayment for $400; car
insurance for $300; and a $10 check for something else. You start
the day with $2,000 in your account, and you make a $2,500 deposit
that day. What happens?
- They
process
the biggest checks first since they are most likely to make you
over-drawn. First the $1,500 housepayment is deducted
from your $2,000 previous balance, and you still have $500. Then
they process the $400 car payment, leaving you with $100.
Then when they process your $300 insurance payment; although
you still have serveral thousand dollars in the bank, you
are $200 OVERDRAWN! Pop -- you are hit with a $30 NSF fee.
Your fourth check for just $10 is also (now) a Non-Sufficent
Funds check; you are bit with another $30 bank fee, and your
account is now $270 (-$200, -$30 NSF, -$10 check, -$30
NSF)
in the red!
- What about your $2,000 deposit made at the bank that morning? Uh, they have not gotten to it yet even though it would have covered everything you did that day. Welcome to the world of customer un-friendly banking. You had $2,000, added $2,500 more, only processed $2,310 in checks, and STILL got nailed for $60 in overdrawn fees.
- There is more? You bet. Some banks will also charge you additional daily fees just for the condition of being overdrawn even though they are the ones who made you overdrawn -- such as $5.00 per day, every day, which adds up to $600/month in bank charges!
- They
- Some banks payout the biggest
charges
first.
Notice that in the example above, if the bank processed your
deposit first, you would have had no problems. And if the processed
the smallest check first, worked toward the largest and then
credited your deposit, you still would have been it with only
one NSF fee.
- Some banks have been fined for deliberately processing your payments late. Why do they keep doing it? Because the fines they pay are less than the profit they make by screwing you.
- Cross-Country mailings. A few credit card companies have deliberately routed your payments so that west coast card holders have to send their payments to the east coast, and east coast cardholders send payments to the west coast. Why? Because it adds 4-7 days to the time before which they have to credit your payment after you mailed it in. Meanwhile, all purchases (charges against your account) are processed immediately, electronically. Oops, YOU are late, and the bank jacks up your interest rate another few points. When you are repeatedly on time making your payments, do they remember to lower your interest rate back down?
- How do you define "best customer"? Here, we think the best customers are the ones who pay the most for the same thing or who in general spend the most money here - for any reason. Suppose you have two customers, one buying a widget for $10 and the other buying the same widget for $100, or one buying a bunch of $50 widgets. Which customer do YOU want? So why isn't a credit cardholder who has been late and is now paying 30% interest on $5,000 seen as a BETTER customer than a credit cardholder who pays early and pays 10% on the same $5,000 -- or who pays the whole $5,000 at once and owes NO INTEREST at all?