A Pilgrim’s Digression

This morning, I went to the ATM at our local Wachovia, and I noticed that the ATM fee has gone up. It used to be $2.00; now it is $2.50. This must be a trend because in Washington last week, I used a Bank of America ATM and the fee was $3.00.

The slap in the face comes when you look at the receipt. That $2.50 or $3.00 is called a “convenience fee.” Whose convenience? Mine I suppose. It is “convenient” for me to have an ATM where I can withdraw money. And by implication, it is “inconvenient” for the bank. So they charge me a fee for my “convenience.”

The whole reason why I withdrew cash only points to more bank stupidity.

Lynn deposited a check in our account on the twelfth. She then told me to schedule a bill payment online. I scheduled it for the fifteenth. That should be no problem, right? Pay it and forget it.

Well, the fifteenth came around and the bank bounced the online payment back to the biller, charging us a $35.00 non-sufficient funds fee, plus another $22.00 for overdraft. Why was the payment bounced? Lynn called to find out. It turns out, the check she deposited was over a certain amount, therefore the bank held it for a week before depositing it into our account. The check had not cleared before my online payment went through. Three days and the check had not been cleared for deposit!

To say we were both a little hot would be an understatement.

Well, I got on the phone with the company whose bill had been bounced. My online statement said that the bill had been paid, no problem. It still says that today, though I know the payment bounced. I spoke with some Pakistani or Indian twat that basically couldn’t tell me anything more about my account than I could see by checking it online. I said good day and hung up.

Meanwhile, Lynn persuaded the bank to refund our $57.00, though she got a good lecture on our irresponsibility in making bill payments on money that technically was not yet in our account. The hold on the check cleared a day or two after the bounce, so now, oddly, our online statement shows a deposit of $1500.00 on the twelfth, with checks and payments clearing up until the fifteenth when I get a bounce and a NSF fee even though the money was clearly in my account. Even so, at the end of the statement I still have more than enough to cover the bill if the company resubmits it to the bank for payment.

Then I get up this morning and check our account and see that I have been charged–again–the $35.00 NSF fee that was previously refunded, though not the $22.00 overdraft fee. Why? My online account is not clear about this and Lynn is calling to find out. My worry is that the original biller resubmitted the bill with a bounce fee attached and overdrew my account, again!

So now I fear that if the bill comes through yet again, I won’t have enough to pay it. So I go to the ATM, withdraw $60.00 cash from the credit union, and deposit it into checking. And I paid, of course, that $2.50 “convenience fee” previously mentioned.

What really gets me heated is why all this came about, though. What the fuck is up with a bank holding a check for a week before clearing it for deposit? A check from another financial institution, no less–not even a personal check? And then I get charged when money that ought to be in my account, isn’t…because the bank has a policy on holding large checks for deposit?

Of course it’s all my fault. I should have waited until the hold on the check cleared. Fuck that. This whole thing strikes me as just another scam allowing banks to extract their piddling fees from customers. Fucking blood suckers. I paid my bill on time, and yet I would have been better off paying late and accepting a one-time fee from the original biller. Now I’ve been stuck with bank fees and, probably, a bounce fee from the biller as well.

I feel like calling up the bank and asking them how the horses are doing, because obviously they must have to deliver checks from one institution to another via Pony Express, if it takes a week for a check to clear. Fuck. We live in a fucking electronic age and yet banks can’t process a deposit instantaneously?

Convenience fee. Consumers ought to start charging banks an inconvenience fee for every time they bend us over and give us a hard, dry screwing. It’s absolutely ridiculous.