Banks also generally make it hard/impossible to opt out of overdraft, something that would probably be preferable to many customers. Overdraft fees are a huge source of income these days.
I had to have a huge argument with my local rep. She kept insisting "what if there isn't enough money to cover the transaction?" and did not seem to understand that it was perfectly acceptable to me for such a transaction to fail, rather than succeed and incur a substantial fee.
Don't get me started on the level of irritated you need to get a bank manager to void protocol, lol.
Smaller online banks & credit unions typically don’t have any fees now.
The same play dumb routine was very common here in the UK too. They made a ton of money on overdraft fees until 2020 when the law banned the outrageous fees.
It works a lot better than complaining on the internet!
Or are you implying that being poor means the bank should cover the overdraft?
What the hell?? My guess is banks have to talk to you because of regulations, but let's not pretend they wouldn't ignore you if they could.
1. historically poor person, they don't want to deal with them and just want to charge them the $35 per individual overdraft, or whatever insanely high charge it is.
2. Poor person works hours that make it impossible to visit or even call a bank. No really, working 1 job with insane hours or several jobs with even more insane hours are not uncommon for poor people.
3. They shouldn't be re-ordering charges in the first place to have the worst possible result and it continues to perpetuate the harm we place on those who have less.
Addendum: nevermind that during this whole time of unfortunate and now very slow because "mail" correspondence, especially when the circumstance described is of a bank re-ordering transactions such as to cause the most possible overdrafts given a time range, this person's whole paycheck they need to survive may have been trapped or eaten by the overdraft fees if there's 4 or 5 of them. Yes, some people make that little.
Yes. Time. Poor people don’t have time to argue with every company that nickel and dimes them. Most people are working during bank hours. They’re working multiple jobs so they can keep the lights on.
A $35 overdraft fee hurts but it’s not enough to sacrifice a shift where you are guaranteed to make $70 for the possibility of getting $35 back (which is by no means guaranteed since they signed a contract that says the bank can take $35 from them).
$35 is a very strategic number, isn’t it? It’s just enough to maximize profits but not quite enough to get most people to navigate customer service, which is likely going to go nowhere.