Posted on 08/11/2010 8:54:36 PM PDT by mainsail that
"In a decision handed down late Tuesday, U.S. District Judge William Alsup accused Wells Fargo of "profiteering" by changing its policies to process checks, debit card transactions and bill payments from the highest dollar amount to the lowest, rather than in the order the transactions took place.
That helped drain customer bank accounts faster and drive up overdraft fees, a policy Alsup referred to as "gouging and profiteering.""
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Surprised no penalties were given for this scummy behavior, just restitution. I'm all for profits and even tens of million in bonuses if earned honestly, but WTF?
they all did it...
If people made sure that they had funds available before making debits, it would not matter in which order they were withdrawn.
The problem with the whole “order they took place” is that they don’t always know.
For anything “card related” like a debit card purchase, sure, but checks are still batch-processed, they arrive in a “batch” each night...they don’t know what “arrived” first, just the day it came. If 3 checks hit the same night, what one was “first?” It’s not feasible to expect someone to read the date on each check, it just doesn’t work that way.
Sounds like wire fraud to me and since there was a pattern; it was racketeering. Those injured ought to get treble damages.
BINGO!
I keep my recorded balance $100 below my actual balance for this very reason. Nothing like a little cash cushion just in case.
We're pretty much done.
Bank of America would pull this crap,as well as sometimes sitting on charges for weeks
Clinton appointee. The rule of law is dead in this country. Long live the Reich!
BofA does it, in fact just a few weeks ago they screwed me over, and I never eve had a negative balance! It wax based on pending charges, and my direct deposit went in before those charges actually processed!! Seriously squirrely math going on. We read them the riot act, but they don’t care.
So did National City.
But that’s alright. They can arrange things the way they want. I can always change banks. And I did.
I remember wathcing a documentary on the credit card industry. Their response was that when they asked their customers if they wanted them to do big payments before little ones, most of their customers said cover my big payments first. Like mortgages, bills, etc.
I can’t say the credit card companies come off as clean as the wind driven snow in their practices. But I don’t think in this case you can say they weren’t dong what most of their folks wanted, covering their big bills first.
I agree with you about sitting on charges and/or holding deposits too long and allowing late charges to occur. However what theyare talking about in this article is not those two instances.
There is a somewhat rational explanation (though ultimately I think it is shady). They claim they are sorting checks by size assuming that more important checks are the larger amounts. So they say the intent is that your large mortgage check won’t bounce because they will try to clear it first. So in theory the process could work in some people’s favor.
The IRS does the same thing, they go after the accounts that owe them the most money, it just simply makes sense.
And they settled a class action suit on it in 2009: http://www.clossonsettlement.com/
I dumped them long before that...for this reason and that they bragged about giving mortgage loans to illegal aliens.
What happens is if there are for example several small charges that do not over draw, and then a debit that is larger and causes an over draft, instead of issuing one over draft fee they process it first so all the other debits that would have been covered incur a fee so instead of $35 in over draft fees the person get hit with $100 or more in fees.
“Profiting” like not picking the mail after a certain so the payments are artificially late or delaying deposits on purpose so you’d occur fees. Oh, please. They get money essentially for free and give it at 18%-33% and still are not happy with the profits, they want to steal.
Geez, I’m typing on my iPhone and it likes to change words on me!!!! That should be “even” not “eve” and “was” not “wax”!!
After all those gubmint regulations? Doesn't seem so...
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