Evil Bank Issues

[Trilby]

Oh, I chose a Credit Union. Much, much nicer people, very helpful and none of this bullshit "pending" of checks that are not direct deposited. In this day and age they can check someone's account in about 20 seconds...don't give me this bullshit that it takes FIVE days for a third party check to clear. 5/3 LIVES on overdraft fees, etc.

[morethanpretty]

I paid in full for my car, like $3000, the man I bought it from didn't pay attention when he deposited the check they entered the wrong amount. $30 HAHAHA, I coulda been mean and let it be but I pointed it out to him. Well thats when the shit hit the fan, he wanted me to just right another check for the remaining amount. I was like "fuck no." I called my bank and they fixed it. He kept calling me, his bank was taking forever to fix the problem on his end. Not my prob, bud. He was a total asshole, took months to send me my registration, even tried to re-charge me for TTL, I'd paid it on the original check. I sent him the receipt, he was pissed he didn't get to scam me. I guess he thought it would be easy because I'm a silly girl. Anyhow the point of the story...he repeatedly told me my bank sucked and I needed a new one, I was like WTF? YOUR bank made the mistake in the first place. YOUR bank won't fix the problem, mine already has. I had a Credit Union that had been bought out by Viewpoint Bank, I've since switched to WAMU, I've liked it well enuf until now...

[Aliantha]

Over here, any cheque that's not made out to 'cash' or isn't a regular pay cheque takes usually 10 days to clear unless you pay a fast clearance fee of usually about $30. Sometimes if you're friendly with your bank they'll cash cheques sooner if you've never had one bounce etc.

On the whole though, we don't use personal cheques here very much. It's mainly businesses that pay with cheques. Most people pay with credit or debit cards.

As far as paying a mortgage by cheque, that just seems weird from where I'm sitting. These days most people over here have it come out of their account automatically on a scheduled day, or they transfer it online. Very few people even go into banks for things like mortgage payments.

[Juniper]

Really? You don't pay your bills by writing out checks? I guess that's the "old fashioned way" but I still do. Phone bill, cable, trash collection, mortgage, insurance, etc. Remember, I got burned by paying my mortgage online, which made me rather reluctant to do it again. I did it last time, though, because I'm out of checks. We'll see if it goes through properly.

How do you pay for things like kids' school fees, church contributions, private lessons, etc.? That accounts for about half of the checks I write.

[Aliantha]

Usually by credit card or sometimes EFT (electronic funds transfer). I don't even own a cheque book, and Dazza only has one for the business which doesn't get used anyway. All his business transactions are online also.

We don't even carry cash hardly. I'm lucky if I have $20 cash in my pocket usually.

I think there's a big difference between how the average Australian manages their personal finances to that of the average American.

[Pico and ME]

I pay all my bills online - its a bill paying service my bank offers. As a result I probably only write only a couple of checks a month. I love it, since I'm always on the computer anyway, I rarely forget to make my payments on time anymore. I also rarely have cash on me. I use the debit/credit card my bank issued me for nearly 99% of my purchases...even fast food restaurants take them now. Six years ago that wasn't the case...I wrote checks for everything and always had cash in my wallet.

[monster]

I think I've written more checks since I moved here than in my entire rest of my life (and imoved here 7 years ago aged 30) at the time it seemed like the banking here was stuck in the dark ages (and sometimes it still does), but when you stop to consider the size of the US and the number of different states with different rules, it's more like international banking than domestic banking. So much easier to get ripped off, so much less protection as the money crosses so many "borders' and passes through so many hands. people write checks because they're easier to track and harder to 'change" or duplicate.

Uk and Aus are so small in comparison that it's not only easier to keep track of stuff, it's easier to update to more "modern" systems -fewer parts of the machine to get updated

[BrianR]

Last year, I wrote a total of four checks. More than the three previous years combined.

Normally, I pay all my bills online, since I tend to spend a lot of time on the road and it's easy to forget a deadline for payment. Especially where my cell phone is concerned, ontime payment in full is crucial and now that many of your day to day bills also report to credit reporting agencies, missing a payment, even by a few days can be credit suicide.

Also, I don't get mail on the road so I don't always even know I have a bill, much less when it is due. So I just sign up for online payment, make darn sure there's enough money in the checking account to pay it all and forget about it. My usual money level is around $1000/mo at all times.

My one bill that must be paid by check is a dues thing that is paid in December of every year. THAT I can remember. They don't take online payments. Heck, they don't even have a website.

[jinx]

I almost never write checks. Maybe once a year or less.... I'm sitting here trying to think of the last time I wrote one, and can't.

[Clodfobble]

I do all the bills with checks, except the mortgage. I don't like the idea of automatic withdrawals. If they screwup, then it becomes my hassle to get my money back.

[Undertoad]

With the first flurry of bills when I was sinking under the weight of my house payments, I found myself strangely unable to pay people who didn't accept being paid by the web.

Then they turned my power and water off.

The water people now take payment by web. Peco still doesn't, because they put no infrastructure into actually serving their customers since their customers have no alternative. It's the electric company, whatre ya gonna do? Put up your own wind farm?

[Iggy]

I work for a bank. And I deal with what happened to Juniper on a daily basis. For one, $5,000 is a lot of money to take a loss on. Where I work (at a smaller local bank) any check over $2,000 is considered for a hold. (Your bank just said it was "pending", we say it is put on hold... same outcome) There are other kinds of holds, but when a bank puts a hold on your check, it is basically to make sure it clears. We purposefully delay the availability of that check.
Where I work, we have to give you a form when we do this. It tells you when the check will be available, and the reason we are holding it. But we call the other bank DAILY to find out if the check has cleared. And when it clears the other bank, we release the hold. Usually after a couple days the hold is released... but the hold we put on is for 11 business days. That is 2 weeks and 1 day for those of you not familiar with business days. It could be longer if there is a holiday thrown in there, since holidays aren't business days.

Also, we deposit your credits BEFORE we debit your account for anything. For example... you have $5 in your account Friday morning. Lots of things come through overdrawing you before noon that day. You can come in at 5:30pm (or until we close, we stay on the same business day) with a deposit covering all those items. At the end of the business day, we rearrange everything so the deposit posts before anything comes through to overdraw your account... and you don't get ANY fees. Whereas some banks would charge you the fees, because technically you were spending money you didn't have in the bank.

Juniper might not think that $5,000 isn't a lot of money, if you don't have that much in your account than the bank would take a loss if the check came back. And banks don't like losses.

As for the scam? We get people in all the time with checks around that amount, that ARE A SCAM. They don't know that the check is counterfeit. You knew the check was good, but the teller probably didn't know you from Adam, how are they supposed to know that you are one of the people that gets checks like those sometimes?? That you are one of the smart people that knows if they get a check in the mail, for something they don't know anything about, that the check isn't real? They don't. They could look at your account history... but then you would be jumping down their throat wondering what was taking so long.

I could go on for days about this... but I don't think that is wise. I'm sorry you had a bad experience with your bank. They should have explained the check wouldn't be available when you made the deposit. We do. But as far as what happened, it happens at all banks. Fraud is on the rise. We have to try to protect our customers and ourselves. If that check had come back for whatever reason, and believe me, checks get returned ALL THE TIME, you would have been in deep doo doo. That is why they wanted to make sure the check cleared. At least that is how we do it. You might think that if it is a check it is automatically good, but it can be a real check, of a US bank, And still get returned. Like I said... it happens ALL the time. Maybe not to you, but you have to realize that the bank doesn't neccessarily know that that particular check is a good check. We have to research it, and wait for it to clear.

Bottom line on checks. They are a PIECE OF PAPER. There is no guarantee that it is going to be paid. It is a written agreement between the check writer and the payee that money is to be paid, but it isn't cash. We have to verify that that piece of paper, that written agreement, you just put in the bank will be honored. Basically you want the bank to give you cash for a piece of paper. And they won't always do that.

Hopefully you find a bank that will better explain things. But what happened at your bank... it could happen at any bank. Oh, and credit unions? They are NOT banks. They are CREDIT UNIONS. And are not subject to the same rules as banks. Banks are much more regulated.

Oh, I almost forgot... as far as you having a credit card with an available balance higher than the check you deposited... if that were the case at MY bank, we would see that right away and know we might not have to put a hold on the check. At least, we would see that if you had it tied to that account for overdraft protection. And we don't charge for overdraft protection on a credit card... just if you use another account. And the fee is much smaller then the overdraft fee... the overdraft fee for going negative is $30 per item, while the fee to do the overdraft transfer from the account is only $8 per day. You only get charged for interest accrued on the credit card.

[Juniper]

Originally Posted by Iggy

I work for a bank. And I deal with what happened to Juniper on a daily basis. For one, $5,000 is a lot of money to take a loss on. Where I work (at a smaller local bank) any check over $2,000 is considered for a hold. (Your bank just said it was "pending", we say it is put on hold... same outcome) There are other kinds of holds, but when a bank puts a hold on your check, it is basically to make sure it clears. We purposefully delay the availability of that check.
Where I work, we have to give you a form when we do this. It tells you when the check will be available, and the reason we are holding it.

See, that's my main problem. They didn't tell me when the funds would be available. You gotta hold my check for a week? Fine, just let me know it's going to be treated differently from the hundreds of deposits I've made in the past.

Also, we deposit your credits BEFORE we debit your account for anything. For example... you have $5 in your account Friday morning. Lots of things come through overdrawing you before noon that day. You can come in at 5:30pm (or until we close, we stay on the same business day) with a deposit covering all those items. At the end of the business day, we rearrange everything so the deposit posts before anything comes through to overdraw your account... and you don't get ANY fees. Whereas some banks would charge you the fees, because technically you were spending money you didn't have in the bank.

I guarantee my bank does not do this. I've watched the transactions get posted, with my online account access, in the course of a day. The checks get taken out first thing in the morning, and if the balance isn't sufficient, it goes straight to my overdraft account. The deposits are usually credited around noonish.

Juniper might not think that $5,000 isn't a lot of money, if you don't have that much in your account than the bank would take a loss if the check came back. And banks don't like losses.

I don't mean to sound flippant about that amount of money; it sure would be a lot for ME to lose. My point is that it's not what I'd consider a "red flag" for unusual activity. But I guess rules are rules. Just wish they were enforced consistently.

As for the scam? We get people in all the time with checks around that amount, that ARE A SCAM. They don't know that the check is counterfeit. You knew the check was good, but the teller probably didn't know you from Adam, how are they supposed to know that you are one of the people that gets checks like those sometimes??

A few months ago I made a similar deposit and the teller asked me what the check was for. I told her, and she said OK, she just wanted to make sure it was legit. There, wasn't that simple?

Oh well. Older and wiser, live and learn.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Juniper

But I guess rules are rules. Just wish they were enforced consistently.

AND, they tell you exactly what the hell they are.

When a bank admonished me for abusing my MAC card, I asked why they didn't tell me what the rules are.
The reply, "If we printed up all the rules it would be as big as a dictionary."
Well then, how the fuck you you expect me to know what the rules are?

[Iggy]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

AND, they tell you exactly what the hell they are.

When a bank admonished me for abusing my MAC card, I asked why they didn't tell me what the rules are.
The reply, "If we printed up all the rules it would be as big as a dictionary."
Well then, how the fuck you you expect me to know what the rules are?

Oh, I agree. I can't tell you how frustrating it is for me when I try to do my job, and everyone says no one else does it that way. My superiors expect me to follow the rules, or I get fired. But then others at different branches might let things slide through. But that is why there is such high turnover. All the tellers that you see that don't do their job? They get fired. Sooner or later, they slip up bad and get the can. That is why I have been in banking for 4 1/2 years, and haven't had that problem. And why some of my customers follow me from branch to branch as I transfer to get promotions. I explain what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and how it will affect them.

One of the problems with the rules is that they are vague. I'm sure there is one clause in the rules that say not to abuse your card, but don't state what they consider abuse. We give our customers a ton of disclosures when they open accounts that tell what we are going to do. Just one of the things it does is inform the customer that at any time, the bank reserves the right to hold your funds. We technically don't even have to notify you at the time, we can mail you the form. But I consider it common courtesy to inform my customers when I decide to hold their funds. And the rules also state that we won't do this with any check. It is hard for the customer to know what to do, since it says we can hold the check... but since it usually doesn't happen, everyone thinks it won't apply to them.

Bottom line, they should have informed you that they were going to do hold your funds, and what constituted abuse for his card. If they didn't do that, they should have refunded the fees and made things right... since it was the first time, and now you know and won't do it again. We do that all the time. But the situation of your check not being made available right away can and probably will happen at any bank.... especially since it happens sporadically. If you deposited $5,000 checks everyone month, from the same people, drawn off the same bank, around the same time, then chances are they wouldn't ever hold your check. They would have a steady history to know that the bank is going to honor your checks.

For example, 99% of the time we hold insurance checks because they are returned so much. And every time, I have to explain it to the customer. And every time, they give me the line that it is a real check, from a real bank, that they know has money. And every time, I have to explain that it doesn't matter whether or not that have the money in that situation, it matters if they will honor the check. It just got me riled up when you said:

I got a check for about $5,000. Doesn't matter where I got it, right? It's a real check, from a real company, drawn on a US bank.

Because it does matter where you got it. That is what I was trying to convey. Again, it sounds like you might need to switch banks. But you just have to know that the same situation could happen at the next bank. Just be careful, and do as much research as possible when you go to the bank.