Uber and Lyft do it now. It ought to be illegal, or opt-in (with a discount to the customer). Delayed billing wreaks havoc on the majority of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck
For debit cards, imagine your account has $0.01 in it and about to be overdrawn. Each transaction from here on out will net you a $35 overdraft fee.
Accounting for the fees, would you rather have 5 immediate charges of $1, or 1 delayed charge for $5?
For credit cards, there's no overdraft, just a hard cutoff.
Everyone using a debit card, especially if poor, should disable overdraft protection at the bank. The fees will eat you alive otherwise.
Edit: s/threat/thread
There are a lot of people who aren't on top of their finances at all.
For them, a delayed transaction wreaks plenty of havoc because they're not keeping track of how much "ghost transactions" are affecting the account balance they see.
Now you could argue it's on them for not being on top of their finances, but Uber makes a lot of money from these people. The largest demographics are 18-24 yr olds, ie people who honestly can't afford overpriced delivery but do it anyways.
It's all a fairly pointless discussion because the simple solution is to suggest Uber, etc. just make this method of charging an optional feature that is easily toggled by their customers. Beyond that, it's an uninteresting discussion, and I don't care to hear people browbeat each other about how Uber is bad and wrong for rolling transactions into one because they didn't consider that their customers are mouthbreathing idiots whose entire financial world will come collapsing down on them if they can't get check their credit card balance for 100% accurate realtime information about their current financial state. Somehow if someone didn't think of this possibility, they are an inconsiderate jerk who "lives" in a "bubble."
Perhaps seeing a big bill dropped on them all at once for their past purchases is the exact wake-up call some people need to track their finances.
No one made any excuses for anyone, it was a simple statement of fact that batched transactions save a marginal cost for the good in question and affect the age group that's using them the most.
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It might even be profitable for them to eat the processing fee and call out the fact there are already X dollars pending to users who have had at least one NSF in the past year as they check out. Why give the bank $20 out of your most captive customers pockets, to save .03 cents on payment processing?
There seems to be this weird idea that it can't be profitable to do things that help your users.
You're also again, showing how completely out of touch you are with how millions of people live: it has nothing to do with a recent spending spree, there are a lot of people who just live in a state where they're always near $0.
The middle class version of living paycheck to paycheck is not having a properly sized savings, there are people who live below that. Some random bill or fee landed the same day as their order is enough to get hit with an NSF, or multiple.
People in a certain bubble take this very black and white view of it. "Why do they have random bills?? Why would they have Netflix and be ordering Uber Eats??". You think that's idiotic, so by implying there are people living like that, I'm coddling idiots.
The truth is life is short and then you die. If people feel a certain level of hopelessness and lack of control over the larger picture, it can be hard to get excited about essentially balancing their checkbook before ordering dinner. I'm not going to sit on some high horse and act like they don't get to make "bad" decisions for comfort.
How many people in tech are still shackling themselves to 7 figure homes after the rate hikes and the layoffs to satisfy their FOMO instead of taking a more rational approach?
I really don't think people understand that if you're commenting on HN you are unlikely to be in the same financial ballpark as someone who is actually poor.
- It's not about credit cards, it's mostly debit. It's a large driver of the 15 billion dollars in NSF fees banks pick up yearly.
- Having 100% up to date information on your money makes it easier to not overdraft, the emotional smokescreen deployed doesn't change that.
- I don't know anyone with any level of financial literacy who would prefer less accurate data on their money: so your suggestion for a switch that makes your transaction history less accurate is questionable to say the least.
Overall you sound insecure about living in a bubble. I didn't paint people as jerks for being in a bubble, but I rightfully pointed out that you're clearly unfamiliar with a challenge in some people's lives.
If self-loathing makes you feel like a jerk for being in a bubble I can see how you could misconstrue that.
But it's still difficult to stay on top of finances when you run dry every month. You need to account for all the different ways a transaction could come in: a check you wrote; a recurring payment that you send out, a recurring payment via ACH, debit, whatever; your own card purchases while out and about.
So it easily becomes overwhelming and then you're in NSF territory.
I used to donate $3 at a time via check to some religious sisters. They were very appreciative and sent me nice tokens and letters, but they waited long intervals to deposit those checks, so there were unfortunate times when the checks bounced, and they rightly objected, because their fees already outstripped the amounts I was donating to them. I just felt kind of helpless at that, and sad that a good relationship was soured over $3.
I think it is unprecedented in history, and absurd, that a company can just reach in and scoop out as much funds as they want on a regular basis. I mean, many things I set up AutoPay have a variable billing amount. They can just increase the bill and they're still hunkydory to remove that amount in the coming months! Please keep consumers in the loop and in control here, folks.
Bill Pay from the bank is, unfortunately, sometimes perilous and difficult to manage, and you may wish for AutoPay after you've had a few mishaps. I recently received a PAST DUE LATE FEES APPLY notice because of a penny. If Bill Pay can't generate an electronic transfer, then it cuts a paper check to mail out (at no charge, which is great) but with all the pitfalls of floating checks (for a poor person who lives close to $0 balance, you don't want a lot of float!)
It’s the same mental power you have, but for a variety of reasons they’re having to apply it to stave off problems instead of to grow their assets as is more typical among software engineers.