Posted on 02/20/2011 7:30:15 AM PST by FromLori
What if you go to use your debit card but find you have a $100 spending limit — even if you have more money in your account? Right now, the idea is a bargaining chip being used by some of the nation's biggest banks, including JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup.
The change would have a big impact on shoppers. The average family spends $122 on groceries every week, so a simple trip to the supermarket might in the future require a stop at the ATM.
It all goes back to new rules that Congress is considering aimed at limiting the fees that banks can charge retailers every time you swipe your debit card.
(Excerpt) Read more at wfaa.com ...
My Sister uses her credit card for everything but writes down each purchase in her checkbook as if she had written a check - therefore reducing her balance by the amount of each purchase. when she receives her Visa bill, she just writes a check for the total and that check amount is already reflected in her balance. She earns points by using her Visa and can then cash them in for gift cards. I know my Visa offers a $25 Walmart card for 3500 points - The first time I realized that I cashed in so many points I got 12 $25 Walmart cards..... great stocking stuffers!
Thanks for the reminder, From. I need to pull out a couple of k’s just to be able to backup my checks now (see earlier post). Annoying, but it doesn’t cost me anything and I usually dress and drive in a way that makes me quite uninteresting to the bad guys.
“Debit cards replace checks, and you don’t have to pay a bill at the end of the month. They should be an ideal solution,”
I don’t buy it!
I’ve never used a debit card but I do charge $3-5,000/month on my credit card and pay it every month with an e-check.
I get all my bills by e-mail and pay them all by e-check and only pay one by mail each month.
I have never had a bank charge for anything in my life, all banking is free.
Me too. We have received thousands of dollars of “free” stuff from rewards points from our credit card.
Tons of DVDs, a couple of vacuums (one of them a Dyson), a couple of flat panel monitors, Satellite radio, etc.
Of course, I realize that the freebies are paid for in higher consumer costs.
And like you we pay off our credit card each month. We account for the charges in our budget so we know before we receive the bill how much we owe.
Retailers should start offering a 3% discount for check or cash purchaes.
I admit that I was a late convert to using them other than at the ATM machine. But for me it’s convenience. It’s quicker than writing a check. I don’t have any credit cards with points programs so I don’t see any advantage to using one of them and paying it off at the end of the month as opposed to a debit card that pays it immediately.
I agree - cash has advantages. It's anonymous. You know exactly how much you have to spend at any given time. And try as you might, you cannot overdraw your cash account - when you're out, you're out.
It's another vile and intensely stupid legacy of the Clinton administration. Hundreds of years of understanding what a check is and is not was summarily thrown out by the Clinton administration.
Now the current situation is that if you present an "on-us" check to a bank, that bank can consider *you* to be their customer, whether or not you have an account with them.
Since you are now suddenly a customer, you can be charged a fee, even for presenting an "on-us" check.
It's outrageous, it's stupid, and it makes no sense with respect to the hundreds of years of legal precedent dealing with checks, but, hey, it makes the banks some more dinero.
Remember the banks make a 3%-7% fee off debit or credit cards. This cost goes into your overall costs, time for retailers to offer cash discounts.
Proof that credit cards are not bad. If you manage them like your checking account.
I used to believe in cash. I rarely use cash anymore.
OTOH... I am sure that all of my purchases can be tracked and monitored. A reality of the digital world.
Based on a personal experience this past Friday I would have to vote yes on this action. A female named Sue Hong used a debit card with her name and another person’s debit card number on it to buy jewelry and clothing in Thornhill Ontario - two charges totaling $1800 and change. Card she used was for my grandson - who is not a boy named Sue - and who resides in the middle of the U.S. What an ordeal this is going to be. At least with a $100 limit in place it might have taken her longer to accomplish this horrible theft.
Regarding the Debit thing, banks can charge higher clearing rates on credit transactions vs. debit transactions. Retailers typically give you a choice, but they (and eventually we) pay the price. There was a stink about this recently and I’m not sure how it got resolved. In the end, the banks have found a way to ±3% off the entire retail economy with these fees. The strategy of the banks anymore is to force everyone to plastic so that they can collect interest and/or fees.
Regarding checking, I had an experience with Chase where, sometime in the last year they stopped providing me with copies of checks I’d written. They previously charged me $4.95/mo for this. They claim they notified me of this change, and somewhere in the 10,000 piece sh!tstorm of marketing materials they send me, they probably did.
In the past when I sat down to to taxes or reconcile medical insurance claims, I’d simply take out my statement and I could scan the check images for relevant checks and be done with it. No more.
When I noticed this a few weeks ago, I emailed them through the message system in online banking. I got a response, and queried back and forth 6 or 8 times getting increasingly contradictory messages about how to solve this, and why the change was made. Finally I called and talked first to a CSR and then to a supervisor. When I complained bitterly to the CSR and supervisor about this change— which I insisted was made without my knowledge or approval— their response was ‘you have no choice, this is our policy’.
They explained to me that most checks are presented automatically and no longer pass through the system. It’s a computerized debit/and credit on the respective accounts. Chase vaults the actual checks eventually for ‘safekeeping’.
BUT they would sell me a copy of any check I’d written for $6 per check. I pointed out to them that these were MY documents and that this policy in essence meant that they were holding my information hostage. They denied this. And then I asked them, ‘if the checks are presented electronically and never go through the system, how is it that you can sell them to me but not give them to me for a modest fee?’. They had no answer. The bottom line is that they know they have something of value and they mean to sell it to me at a high price.
We went round and round on this, with me asking them to just print my images for the last year. I simply could not believe that a high-level supervisor at the online banking center couldn’t come up with a way to print my checks and just mail them to me. She was very evasive. When I pressed her for her name, she at first declined; when I said I would complain to the CEO she gave it to me. She would not identify anyone in the organization higher than her. She did say that if I went to my local branch bank that the branch manager would print out copies of my checks free of charge.
So, the other day I went into my bank, identified myself to the CSR, and requested copies of all checks written on my two Chase checking accounts for the last year. She balked, saying that she could sell them to me for $6 each; I recounted my experience with the online people and that they said I was entitled to the checks. I told her to get her supervisor. The branch manager came out and reluctantly agreed to print the checks, but not before protesting that ‘it’s really difficult to do’ and ‘not our policy’.
I pointed out to him that it’s even harder (maybe impossible) to do on their website, and he said, ‘our system is not designed for this’. I asked him to repeat that statement, and then I said, ‘The faulty design of your database is not my concern. You’re holding my documents hostage’.
I pointed out to him that any check written on a Chase account goes into a black hole. You can make note in your register, but you can’t sort or aggregate these or prove to anyone what the memo area of the check said. Then when you get your statement, it shows how much was deducted on what check number but no record of the payee.
After much back and forth, and me asking him how I would fix this, he offered two solutions: xerox every check you write, or open a Chase Premium Checking® account with a minimum $15,000 balances on your Chase accounts.
I don’t know about anyone else, but the last place I’d park $15,000 is Chase bank.
And do they really think that xeroxing every check is a viable business model?
So, the poor CSR who had the bad luck to meet me has to dig up about 120 check images. She predicted it would take ‘days’
And I have to find a new bank.
They have an algorithm based upon past behavior, and if something is really outside the established “pattern” as far as location and/or amount, it can be flagged and denied, or they’ll call you to verify that it’s really you attempting to make the charge if they can do so.
It can be a definite pain if you inadvertantly get stuck because of it, but it was put into place to help stop credit card fraud. Call the issuer if it happens to you again, verify your identity and they’ll approve it in my experience.
All it has done at our company is make us look into alternative banks (there are plenty around, some aggressively courting our business). The other fees already had us meeting with some, and this is just accelerating the process.
Some do or did. Or they refused credit cards. This is rare anymore, though.
Must make business sense to allow credit cards. Most of their customers use credit cards and the few who use cash pay for the rest plus increased costs cover the additional 3%.
“Weird I thought Sams used e-check. Regardless the store could have called for funds verification. The manager ALWAYS has the ability to override and accept the check, unfortunately scumbags out there write ALOT of bad checks that are NEVER collected on. The innocent pay for this. “
Good to know, thanks. It was definitely telecheck in my case, but it may vary. They never offered to override, they just told me to take a hike. It didn’t get as far as me walking away as one of my kids with me had a Mastercharge debit card with enough to cover it (I teach my kids how to handle money)...so their system was happy with that.
So next time, I’ll have some fun with them, using your info, before having to break out my wad of 100s.
” At least with a $100 limit in place it might have taken her longer to accomplish this horrible theft. “
So, your solution is to disrupt the commercial life of all, for the convenience of the few...
As long as you’re at it, make it illegal for anybody to carry more than $10 in cash to minimize the ‘take’ for muggers....
Or we could just stop all money-based economic activity altogether, and then nobody would ever lose any money....
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