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Comment by delinka | Hacker News Reader

I have trust issues with banks, and even my credit union. I verify their interest calculations. I monitor payment amounts. I challenge every single incorrect "NSF fee" (it's a small-town bank, and this has happened several times.)

In a situation like in the article, continue paying the original, higher, correct loan payment. Make sure that the 'extra' (and indeed, any extra you intentionally pay any other time) goes toward the principal balance and not into your property tax escrow account. You've got to watch any bank you do business with, even to correct their honest mistakes. If your payment changes, find out why. If your extra principal payments aren't applied correctly, get it fixed. And when you have evidence of a pattern of wrongdoing, get the law involved.

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>> And when you have evidence of a pattern of wrongdoing, get the law involved.

Where do you go exactly? I left Wells Fargo because (among similar "errors"), the charged me $15 monthly for "Fees" which they would reverse when I asked them what the fee was for. I had documentation of them insisting it was just a one-time mistake for several consecutive months and then charging the fees again every month for months. But who's going to investigate Wells Fargo over a $15 "mistake" that they fix as soon as you ask them to?

This is what class action suit are for. Multiply $15 by a hundred thousand affected customers for a year, and you've got some serious cash. The same reason Fargo is down to do this is the same reason it's a good target for a class action: there's actually a lot of money there.

Wells Fargo customers cannot file a class action suit because they have agreed to binding arbitration (with individual action only).

The CFPB does.

You file a CFPB complaint here:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/

I've done this successfully against Citibank.

Even though you aren't a Wells Fargo customer anymore you can probably still file a complaint as long as you still have the documentation. Letting them know let's them undercover systemic problems.

Once you involve the law after finding a pattern of wrongdoing they get a small fine and move on to the next scam.

If they even bother investigating. From the sibling comment:

> But who's going to investigate Wells Fargo over a $15 "mistake" that they fix as soon as you ask them to?

The bureaucracy to file charges for something so small is a non-starter. It's probably happening to tens of thousands of other customers, but then you have to do the leg-work to get other people on board. There's nothing you can do involving the law that doesn't require a significant time investment. And as you've said, the punishment is such a pittance that all the hard work didn't matter in the end.

You're wrong.

I've successfully gotten the law involved with Citibank with a time investment of around 10, maybe 15 minutes. All I did was filled out this form: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/ and they handled it from there. However, the CFBP has only been around for less than a decade.

And the current administration hates the CFBP

> every single incorrect "NSF fee"

Huh...how often does that happen? If you don't mind me asking, does that happen even if the account in question isn't close to zero?

It does indeed happen when an account isn't close to zero. And I always disable "overdraft protection" on my accounts - no, if I don't have the money, I don't want to pay you $35 for the privilege of "avoiding embarrassment" at the point of sale. Apparently, depending on authorized (but not yet settled) debit transactions (of which there can be multiple for the same event), the time of day, how long it's been between those authorizations and settlement, and some hand-wavy heuristic that no one can ever explain, this particular account would incur the fee for no reason the humans at the bank could explain.

And they always start off with the "be more responsible" spiel, until I get them to do the math themselves. Then they look confused, reverse the fee, and promptly forget about it. Until it happens again.

Part of the problem in these cases is factoring in those non-settled charges - money doesn't actually move until the settlement comes through. Sure, auths should affect available balance (and then refuse to accept more transactions if there's not enough available), but shouldn't be affecting the balance calculation for NSF fees.

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