Bank Managers

[AndCity]

I had reason to go into the bank today and got to speak to the branch manager - he looked about 19!!! AND then he had the damn cheek to tell me I should manage my money a bit better!

For Christs sake, I went overdrawn £1.02 and they wanted to charge me £28 for the pleasure!!! I eventually got it back after phoning the head office!

Perhaps I am just getting old!

[candleman]

cheeky
good on you for getting your money back from them tho' ..thats allot of money for 1pound.

i went about US$5 overdrawn a while back.. the buggers had the cheek to phone me and say "when are you paying it back"
WTF ?? i've been banking with them for almost a decade, and for the last 5 years getting paid on the same day each month... 2 days before payday they phone me..
idiots.

[AndCity]

... and worse still... I'd realised that i'd gone overdrawn and put some cash in but that £28 put me overdrawn again and they wanted to charge me another £28 - so that's £56 for £1.02!

They say you never see a poor bookmaker but I reckon bankers are richer!

[Eastree]

I've heard a lot of such complaints about banks. One company with branches local to me is notorious for not processing anything until the end of the day, then batch-processing all withdrawals before any deposits.

So if I had $5 in the bank, and deposited my pay before shopping, I'd have a load of overdraft fees the next day.

It's why I don't use that bank. Granted, every bank available locally does something similarly atrocious.

[l.k.madison]

Eastree, that sounds like who we bank with. (is your debit card blue?)

"you know you're a photographer when you..." - let's fill in "use the term "batch-processing" when referring to banks

Our bank is beyond famous for not letting a paycheck clear for FOUR days - i.e. it goes in at noon on Friday and it's not "available" until Tuesday morning. I'm sorry, I live paycheck to paycheck, I need that money on Saturday (and Sunday and Monday). A few hours I can understand, but four DAYS??!!

My favorite was the day we had $40.72 (I told you we were broke) in our account and my husband buys a donut from Starbucks costing just shy of a dollar. Then the bank throws a "convenience fee" onto our account for $40 (funny how that's exactly what was in there) and THEN throws in a $35 NSF because their fee put us in the hole. And when we called them to ask them about it "Sir, we reserve the right to place fees in your account, it's part of our contract" -- oh my husband was LIVID. I think he almost made the lady cry. When she saw our account "Oh, I don't know why that was charged, I'll remove it" and she still seemed hesitant to remove the NSF fee, we got her to do it, but it took a threaten to change banks (which works btw if you get a different teller each time you call)

Or is my favorite the day that my husband was traveling from South Louisiana to DFW (as he does once a month or so with work) and they froze our account because "it looked like someone stole your card because they got gas three times within a few hours" so when *I* stop to get gas and it's frozen (without my knowledge) and I call them and they don't see any reason why I can't use it, I'm stuck at a gas station on vapors. And since husband's on a joint account with his parents - in an account based in DFW, you'd think they'd realize he made the trip. But when Paypal calls because our account got hacked into and someone spent $200 of our money, Paypal freezes the paypal account - we call the bank and we get "No Ma'am, we can't freeze it on suspicion, something has to happen to give us reason to" and even when I countered with "But i'm TELLING you to freeze it, it's my account, here's my social/address/blood type/number of times I pee during the day, I swear it's me" they insisted they couldn't. Guess who woke up the next day to $200 missing out of our account. Yup. We did. Because the bank wont' freeze it when I tell them to but freeze it when my husband gets gas. (FYI, Paypal reimbursed us without a problem, they were awesome about it)

[Rolling Stone]

I'm a cash man.
No worries.
Just my way of sticking it to the man. ; )

[EmigrantChris]

Originally Posted by Eastree

then batch-processing all withdrawals before any deposits.

The best part of that is that they don't even process the withdraws in the order they're received. They process them from highest to lowest amount, so you're more likely to get more overdraft fees. Their explanation is that the higher withdraws are probably more important (Rent, mortgage, car payments, etc...) and should be processed first so those don't bounce. It's all about more money for them though.

I hate banks, and try to do as little as possible with them. Credit card companies are just as bad now.

[DeadJosh]

Originally Posted by l.k.madison

...here's my social/address/blood type/number of times I pee during the day...

that's funny stuff there...

really makes me appreciate my bank all the more...we're famous for leaving $1 in our account when funds are getting low so we can fill the gas tank using the debit card...we don't get charged any overdraft fees or anything...heck, one time when we were like $40 overdrawn, they paid our rent check anyway...what a relief.

[OsmosisStudios]

I love my bank: I have it set up so that if the account is about to be overdrawn, it refuses to allow it out and e-mails me. Even if it's a scheduelled payment of some sort.

Only had it happen once.

[windrider86]

Sometimes that's what I love about small town life. We wanted a new Harley so the president of the bank says. Go get one, write the check, we'll cover it and we'll deal with the paper work later!
Or, one time they screwed up our account and we were out of town and had no funds to get home. So again, the president took a thousand dollars out of his personal account so we could get back!
Now, THAT'S customer service!