Bank Of America Pending Balance Overdraft Charges Tampa Florida

It's not simply having an available balance showing negative and a pending counter-transaction yet to be made. It's a pending balance remaining positive from a previous deposit prior to purchase triggering an Overdraft.

Let's go Sylver's example:

Available Balance: $50.00 - Wednesday

Purchases:

Starbucks - $4.50

---

Available Balance: $45.50 - Thursday

Deposits:

Check - $10.00

Purchases:

Lunch out - $20.00

Oil Change - $35.00

---

Available Balance: -$9.50 - Friday

Pending Balance: +$0.50

Overdraft Charge: $35.00

---

They will overdraft you if the Pending Charges put your Available Balance in the negative, even though the Pending Balance still remains Positive.

It's not a matter of Banks 'Not being psychic', it's simply them milking every dollar and cent from their customers who already paid to keep them afloat with their tax dollars. They don't even make a valid attempt to show up to breakfast meetings invited by the President to review their impractical practices.

Pending Charges are so delayed at times they wont even post weeks later. Their system is weak at updating charges even with the pending balance, corrections are made and an Available Balance prior to their midnight system update be $1.50 and in the morning show -$10.00 from something 3 weeks ago the merchant forgot to post.

(Haven't had it change balances prior to their midnight update forcing a miscalculation and a subsequent Overdraft with BoA, but I have had it happen to BB&T. Their arguement is valid however, in a way. I forgot to record a purchase and attempted to use their 'up to date, and accurate' online banking service to figure out what was missing and I inadvertently invited myself to be financially raped. Shame on me.)

which appears as an 'Update' to one of the most recent Ripoff Reports here at the- BANK OF AMERICA page!

SPREAD IT ALL OVER THE WORLDWIDE WEB!

Thank you.

I'm Karl, and I approve all my poems!


POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Pending this but not pending that. Not quite sure how all this pending works but from what I've seen, I do see one thing. IF something is coming OUT of your account, they take it OUT of your account RIGHT AWAY. And if that puts your account in the negative, you get hit with an NSF fee RIGHT AWAY. If a deposit is pending, it's pending overnight, until the next day or longer. The lady yesterday posted about 5 days. WHY IS THAT? We know the reason for that. We're gonna have to find out their definition of "PENDING". "Pending" only applies to credits not debits. Was listening to that radio guy the other night on my way home. He was going off about BoA. Was quoting the Wall Street Journal's article about lewis and BoA. How BoA has received some $165 billon from taxpayers and the CEO ken lewis was heard bragging about how BoA had screwed their customers for another $10 billon in fees. Now I read yesterday from our favorite guy in CO how lewis was out. Looked it up and the report was lewis was removed as chairmen but was retained as CEO. For the life of me I don't know why you folks stay with BoA. I'd wonder about a CEO who was bragging about how he and his company was screwing their own customers. But that's just me.

With PENDING transactions, it's true the Available balance indicates negative. But this is just an INDICATION. That's all. It has no bearing on money that is PHYSICALLY in the account. Even though it's APPARENT the customer has SPENT more money than they have at that point, still the money that is PHYSICALLY in the customer's account has not yet been USED UP and overdrawn YET. It's only after that happens, that the bank can honestly say the customer has truly exhausted all of the PHYSICAL CASH in his account. Only then is the account TRULY overdrawn and when fees should be assessed.

Yes, it's true that debit card purchases are GUARANTEED. When the merchants send these in, they MUST be paid and they're NEVER returned. Having said that, in between the time the card swipe is made, and before the merchant sends in the request for payment, anything can happen. If the transaction is cancelled, guessed what? The customer never overdrew his account. Correction - The customer never used all of the PHYSICAL CASH in his account, which means they never overdrew the account.

These fees are a ripoff, plain and simple.

If I understood your report correctly...you are basically trying to float the purchases you make on your debit card (i.e. make purchases on a Wednesday afternoon, which show as pending until they are actually posted on your account sometime the next business day. Then go the next morning, Thursday, and deposit a check to cover the purchases that haven't yet posted).

The problem, here, from the bank's point of view...is that they are not psychic. Allow me to explain. Let's say you have $50.00 in your checking account on a Wednesday morning. You make the following purchases:

Starbucks - $4.50
Lunch out - $20.00
Oil Change - $35.00

Balance left is -$9.50

This probably shows similar to this on your online banking statement (mine does):

(4.50)
(20.00)
(35.00)

And your balance shows as:
(-9.50).

Most people assume, that these items that are "pending" don't really matter because they ARE only pending. Not true. From the bank's perspective...you have spent $9.50 more than you had in your account and they are not psychic and cannot know that you PLAN to make a deposit.

...I found that if you get on the phone with BoA at the 1-800... number, speak to a representative, and rudely question why you are being charged when your balance never went into the red, he / she will refund you the overdraft fees.
BoA is very weak in that aspect. They know they are doing wrong, so whenever you yell at them for doing something, they will reverse it.
I gained back over $100 that they tried to take from me in overdraft fees.
It's worth it.

...I found that if you get on the phone with BoA at the 1-800... number, speak to a representative, and rudely question why you are being charged when your balance never went into the red, he / she will refund you the overdraft fees.
BoA is very weak in that aspect. They know they are doing wrong, so whenever you yell at them for doing something, they will reverse it.
I gained back over $100 that they tried to take from me in overdraft fees.
It's worth it.

...I found that if you get on the phone with BoA at the 1-800... number, speak to a representative, and rudely question why you are being charged when your balance never went into the red, he / she will refund you the overdraft fees.
BoA is very weak in that aspect. They know they are doing wrong, so whenever you yell at them for doing something, they will reverse it.
I gained back over $100 that they tried to take from me in overdraft fees.
It's worth it.

Jon, I understand your point about BofA charging fees for pending transactions before they post. In the past, when you made this error, the banks used to allow you to make a same day deposit, before cutoff, to beat the transaction and avoid any fee. Now, as Jim said, as soon as you swipe the card and that swipe overdraws your Available balance, the bank has pre-determined that you will get a fee no matter what, even if you make a deposit to cover it, and even if the Posted/Account balance never goes negative. I agree with you that this is a ripoff, but at least this one is debatable. You did in fact overdraw the account, at 'that point in time'. The banks have changed the rules now, but I digress on this point.

But Jon, you should consider yourself lucky. Apparently you didn't have any other outstanding debit purchases or checks previously written, which were submitted and posted WHILE your Available balance was negative from the watch repair charge. Because if you did, EACH ONE of them would have ALSO been charged a fee, even though NONE of them overdrew your account, like the watch repair. Now this behavior is NOT debatable and is a RIPOFF without a doubt. This was the other subtle change made in their new policy change in March of 2008.

You're complaining about the one fee for the one transaction that overdrew the balance. But on many other ROR reports similar to yours, the OP understands and accepts the fee for the lone transaction that overdrew the balance. What they don't understand or accept are the NUMEROUS other fees for all those other previous transactions that never overdraw ANY balance, Posted or Available.

Don, the only way this could have happened based on what you wrote is for something you failed to mention and that was the use of a debit card. When you use the debit card, the money is considered to be gone from the account EVEN if the money never actually does. It's as if you went to the ATM immediately and drew the money out. It is only when you use a debit card can you overdraw an account without the account going into the negative. If you knew how a debit card really worked (and worked to your detriment) you would never use one again.

Stay away and avoid using your debit card for anything except removing money from your ATM, since debit cards often double as your ATM card. Stick to checks, cash, and a credit card for emergencies, keep an accurate register, and you'll never run into this problem again.