If you want to research a foul way of doing business, read up on Chexsystems and the collusion of major banks with national check-cashing firms. 20 years ago a consortium of bankers got together and essentially said, "if we build a credit-report system for bounced checks, we can limit our liabilities from poor people and make them give us 3-5% of their income by blacklisting them from all the nation's banks".
Blacklisting people who bounce checks seems a lot more reasonable than many other banking practices. Don't bounce checks; you're committing a form of fraud, providing a promise to pay money you don't have. I see nothing wrong with refusing to do business with people who regularly commit fraud.
Wow. I was in chexsystems for seven years. My fraud was that two automated payments to PG&E and Speakeasy bounced. Why did they bounce? A woman in a volvo ran a red-light while I was commuting to my stupid dot-com job, causing me to spend a month in the hospital, half of that in and out of a coma. I had no friends or family nearby to visit me, let alone to tend to my finances while I was incapacitated. I'm an engineer, I don't mind the $5k/year vig I had to pay to the loan-sharks (because banks won't turn large checks into cash if you don't have an account with them, even though they are valid checks written off of accounts with them). I don't mind having to go to the ghetto to visit these loan-sharks. I don't mind that I couldn't get a car-loan, a mortgage, student loans, a credit card, or a lease without a co-signer. I still survived, I just went through an incredible amount of stress and inconvenience. I still don't mind, life is suffering. I accept that.
What I do mind is the needless suffering my very poor aunt has to endure because of this extortion aimed at the poor. She nets about $14k/year, without health-insurance, from serving lattes to entitled engineers like myself. Of that $14k has to spend $700/year to the same loan-sharks. Her "fraud" was assuming that debit card purchases would be reflected instantly when she carefully checked her account before paying her utility bill two years ago.
She made a mistake that frankly she wasn't educated enough to anticipate was even possible. Now she's suffering needlessly for it.
For a person in the real world, you know the one who serves you your half-fat breve latte with a twist, foam and room, the system has refused to do business with her in order to extort enough money from her to ensure that she can't climb up any ladder.
There's a reason I said "regularly"; blacklisting someone who bounced one check seems excessively harsh. And I also consider it entirely unreasonable for any bank to refuse to cash their own checks, under any circumstances; I haven't run into such a bank but I can easily believe that they exist.
In any case, those sounds like two quite painful tales. There's a reason I don't set up automatic payments for anything (I prefer manually using online bill pay each time).
This is used to trap poor people. Joe Anonymous accidentally miscalculates the available balance of his checking account and makes a debit card purchase of gum for $0.99. His account balance is now -$0.23. PNC hits him with an overdraft fee of $25, and an additional daily overdraft fee each day until Friday (payday), bringing his balance into the negative by hundreds of dollars. Joe then has to choose between paying his rent and bringing his account current at PNC. After a month or so, PNC blacklists him and he can't open a bank account anywhere.
Not fraud as far as I can see. At least not on Joe's part.
With many banks, you can go to the bank and tell them to simply refuse payment of any overdraft, rather than granting it and charging you. Your card will then get declined if you don't have enough in your account.
The automatic overdraft "protection" scam was recently made illegal. Now you have to opt-in to have overdrafts covered.
Banks made a ton of money off of this, so this is another reason why they are trying to find new ways to raise revenue. At least a $5 fee is out in the open, and consumers can choose.
