US Bank Sucks

Let me tell you about my day.

For a bit of background info, I work at A Bank. A bank that is recognizable in my region, that isn’t huge, but big enough. Before that, I worked at a larger bank for a long time. I’ve got a few years of experience in the financial industry. For some reason, which I did not expect going into it, it’s been really fascinating and enlightening to me on a number of levels, especially since I have a history of being terrible at managing my own money and a terrible history of overdraft fees with every bank I’ve been a customer of. Either way, what I’m adamantly arguing against and hate so passionately has nothing to do with my bank, the one I work for. It has to do with another one, the one I bank WITH.

For one, I’m not trying to assume that no one knows these terms or definitions, but for the sake of clarity, allow me to make sure we’re all on the same page here (I apologize for the possible bank jargon, but I think it will be easily understood nonetheless):

A ledger balance is commonly and accurately defined as the balance as of the previous business day. This means that any transactions that have posted to your account (NOT PENDING) as of the last business day. Any pending transactions are not reflected in your ledger balance as of yet… because:

A pending transaction, essentially, is a transaction that has occurred sometime after the start of the business day but before processing time, which occurs after business hours. This means that, using the bank I work at as an example, after 3pm one day and before 3pm the next, any transactions made within that time frame will show pending during that time, but you will see them POSTED when you check your account the next day. They will be posted with a date of the day that they occurred. Any transaction made after 3 pm will be considered made the next business day.

Now we move on to more complicated territory: Visa check card transactions.

What they tell us is that when you use your check card (Your VISA check card) to make a transaction, (we’ll use Super America as an example) the cashier swipes the card. The swiping of the card starts a request to the bank that the card is issued by. Super America is essentially asking Your Bank if they can go ahead and debit your account for whatever it is that you want to spend there. Your Bank says, YES, go ahead, and so the transaction is approved and you get your receipt. You go online and you see that transaction “pending.” This pending transaction occurred on whatever business day the bank considers it to be based on their terms and conditions, but it will not post as of that same date.

The reason for this is that a checkcard is just that: a CHECK CARD. It’s a plastic version of those archaic things we used to fill out and hand to people or merchants as a form of payment. When you write a check to someone, it is not legally considered to be currency until it clears the bank that it was drawn on. Until someone deposits said check, it is merely a piece of paper. This is clear enough. When that check is deposited and the bank that is was drawn on becomes aware of it, it is then presented to the account for payment. If the account has funds to cover it (and everything else, such as endorsements, etc. are in line), then the check will be considered paid because the funds will have then been withdrawn form the account and deposited into the account of the merchant or person that piece of paper was given to.

SO.

The only difference between a check and a check CARD is that you can see check card transaction waiting to be presented to your account before they are actually presented, whereas with a check, the exchange of money for goods or services isn’t officially documented until it’s actually presented for payment. The merchant accepting check cards as a method of payment use, for simplicity’s sake, the receipt, be it paper or electronic, as the “check” and it takes a certain amount of time to be officially presented to Your Bank as a withdrawal that you authorized, like a check that you wrote that the person/merchant you wrote it to deposited whenever they saw fit. Larger companies like SA or other large merchants or retailers tend to do this in a streamlined and fast way. Their check card “receipts” are “deposited” in “batches,” the banks that the payments come from are notified, and they are posted, deeming them official transactions. The only difference between these and real checks are that the card transactions are guaranteed to be paid while the checks are not. Checks can be returned based on an insufficient balance at the time of presentation, and check card transactions will not be returned after they have already been initially approved by the bank.

MEANING!

A check “pends,” sure, but invisibly. It pends unofficially. A check card transaction pends, but you can see it, online if you have online banking, in a transaction printout from the bank, on an automated phone system, etc. and so forth and whatever. The difference is, a bank does not know that a check exists until it is deposited into the payee’s bank account, but a bank knows that a check card transaction takes place as soon as the “check” is “written,” because it is electronic and that’s how electronic things work.

IF a check card is supposed to be what its name describes, then it should be treated as such, no? But alas, it is not. Not at US Bank, anyway.

If a check card transaction is pending, the merchant has not yet been paid. This can be easily illustrated by understanding the methods of hotels, restaurants, car rental companies, etc. These places will often place “holds” on your account, the equivalent of writing a “deposit” check to your local liquor store for potential damage to a keg you purchased for a party, to anticipate any kind of damage or non-return of the item. If you bring the keg back unharmed and intact, the check is returned to you. If you bring the car back, leave the hotel undamaged, leave a tip, whatever, they drop the hold and you’re only charged what you initially agreed to. That amount is what POSTS to your account. End of story.

Let’s say, for example, you have $200 in your bank account. You want to purchase a keg for your going away party because you’re moving somewhere fabulous. You write the liquor store a check for $100 because that is what they say is the cost of replacing a keg should you damage it or fail to return it. The money is not out of your account unless the check is deposited into the bank that the liquor store does business with. You’ve always had $200 in your account, and you’re not being charged if you spend $150 of that $200 while the liquor store still has possession of your $100 check, because the peice of paper that you gave to the liquor store is not an official transaction yet because the liquor store has not deposited it into their bank account. It’s still a fucking piece of paper.

Now, let’s change it up a bit.

You still have $200 in your account. You go visit your grandma in Alabama because she’s hosting the annual family polka party, and you need hotel. Your room, for the amount of time you will be staying there, will cost you $100. They do not accept checks. You hand them your check card, and they say that they will be charging your card $250, to anticipate any damages you may cause to the hotel room or any charges you may rack up from the wet bar or the videos you may watch. They want to make sure they get the money that would be owed to them, should any of those events occur.

Your bank account appears to be $50 negative, because a check card transaction will show up right away, unlike a piece of paper with some numbers written on it that hasn’t been deposited yet. That doesn’t matter, though, because once you check out of the hotel, and it’s proven that you didn’t damage anything, watch any porn, or drink anything that they put in your bar, they drop the hold (or rip up the check) and charge you the $100 you agreed to in the beginning (or have you write out a new check for $100).

What I’m ultimately trying to get at is that if you bank with US Bank, they will charge you an overdraft fee for the hotel’s transaction that didn’t ultimately get deposited into the hotel’s bank. The hotel didn’t make the money that US Bank charged you for spending (or not spending). They charged you an overdraft fee for something that didn’t actually exist.

It’s like US Bank trying to say, “I bet you wrote a check. I don’t know if you really did or not, because I have no idea what you do with paper and pens, but I just *bet* that you did. You have $200 in your account, and I am gonna guess that you wrote on a piece of paper and that piece of paper said something about a dollar amount that was more than that, so I’m gonna charge you $37.50 about it.”

How fair is that? God, we can’t even talk about FAIR in this context. “Fair” dos not even play into the equation. It’s about Right and Wrong. Smart and Dumb. Nice and Mean.

HOW can you do that?!

I know I said this was going to be about “my day,” and I have yet to even describe what exactly happened to me today, but I’m sure that, based on the rant above, you can take a wild guess and understand that US Bank charged me 3 overderaft fees for pending transactions when my ledger balance never went into the negative. Ever. It was planned, I knew I was negative, but I knew the transaction wouldn’t post, and I knew that I was getting a paycheck automatically deposited the very next day.

That’s just not nice!