Sure, there's been lots of DISCUSSION about it, but never any action. If you're a bank, then practies that will get a loan shark hauled off to court are common & accepted practice.
Here's another little goodie in that regard. Take a look at your bank transactions online and you'll notice an odd little phenomenon. Let's say you hit the ATM for $50 at 10 am, then write a check for $20 at the post office at noon, use your debit card to pay $30 to your florist for your spouse's birthday, and write another check at your local bar for $300 at 4 pm. If everybody deposits their checks at the bank before closing time, an odd thing will happen - time wil be suspended. The $300 check will clear your account first, followed by the $50 ATM withdrawal, then the $30 debit card transaction to the florist, and finally the $20 check to the post office.
The bank racks them up & clears them in order of AMOUNT so that if you happen to overdraw the account & exceed your overdraft protection, the smaller checks will hit the account last, racking up the largest number of overdrafts (and fees). If the bank is quizzed about this strange policy, they will try to explain that they program their computers to do this as a "customer service", since presumably the bigger checks are more imortant and they want to save you the embarrasment of explaning the overdraft to somebody important (maybe another bank ?). Most big banks handle things this way, so this matter of processing transactions isn't an uncommon occurrence these days.
Heres a further discussion about your pet peeve, written by someone much more knowledgeable that I. Although I question the conclusion that any meaningful help is actually on the way. (As I said, lots of discussion by the politicians & regulators, but no real action.)
Here's another little goodie in that regard. Take a look at your bank transactions online and you'll notice an odd little phenomenon. Let's say you hit the ATM for $50 at 10 am, then write a check for $20 at the post office at noon, use your debit card to pay $30 to your florist for your spouse's birthday, and write another check at your local bar for $300 at 4 pm. If everybody deposits their checks at the bank before closing time, an odd thing will happen - time wil be suspended. The $300 check will clear your account first, followed by the $50 ATM withdrawal, then the $30 debit card transaction to the florist, and finally the $20 check to the post office.
The bank racks them up & clears them in order of AMOUNT so that if you happen to overdraw the account & exceed your overdraft protection, the smaller checks will hit the account last, racking up the largest number of overdrafts (and fees). If the bank is quizzed about this strange policy, they will try to explain that they program their computers to do this as a "customer service", since presumably the bigger checks are more imortant and they want to save you the embarrasment of explaning the overdraft to somebody important (maybe another bank ?). Most big banks handle things this way, so this matter of processing transactions isn't an uncommon occurrence these days.
Heres a further discussion about your pet peeve, written by someone much more knowledgeable that I. Although I question the conclusion that any meaningful help is actually on the way. (As I said, lots of discussion by the politicians & regulators, but no real action.)
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