Anyone have any tips for getting BOA to waive overdraft fees? And/or any advice on convincing them not to let me spend money I don't have
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banks are just a-holes like that. all of them. that's how they make their money. you'll just have to take the time to keep track of your money better unfortunately :(
It's not assholish to lend you money when you haven't opted-out of overdraft protection. You agreed to it when you signed up for the account. They're a business like any other, and they have to make money to stay in business and pay their employees.
Bottom line, banks are not charities and don't have to be nice to you.
BUT one thing that BoA in particular does that IS assholish (and which they got sued for, I received a class action settlement thing in the mail for) is when you overdraft with, say, a $100 charge, and PRIOR TO THAT had made a few small charges, they will put through the high amount FIRST to overdraft you, and THEN put through all the smaller charges so they can give you an overdraft on all the smaller ones. THAT is wrong. i'm glad they got sued for that.
but in general i agree with you, people just need to keep track of their money. i am OCD about writing down everything in my register, i often take my account down to less than a dollar and never get overdrafts. it's really not that hard to keep track of your purchases!
IMO transactions should be processed in the order received, so yes. I would agree that that's wrong. I'm just sort of tired of people bitching about how the mean banks screwed them over, when in reality they just aren't keeping track of their accounts.
Anyone have any tips for getting BOA to waive overdraft fees? And/or any advice on convincing them not to let me spend money I don't have?
It's not a direct answer to either of those, but it may help reduce overdraft fees... Do you have any form of overdraft protection on your account? If not, is there a way you could set up a savings account (even depositing a little at a time) to use as overdraft protection for your checking account? If you have that available, sometimes then the overdraft/automatic transfer fee is less than it would be for a straight overdraft with only the checking account.
The only problem is that BOA has crappy checking account options. You have to have a minimum balance of $200 at pretty much 0% interest (it was 0.5% when interest rates were around 4% at places like ING) or you get charged maintenance fees.
Yuck. I'd also look into switching out of BOA, in that case. I don't have a minimum balance for checking, and I only have to keep $25 in my savings account to avoid fees.
We dealt with this once when we thought we had overdraft protection set up, but for some reason it was never set up (where they take the money out of savings/ off a credit card if you accidentally overdraft your checking). Do you have a savings acct with them with money in it? Can you tell them you thought you had overdraft protection? We actually did think we had it, but maybe you could stretch the truth? They ended up waiving the fees for us when that happened to us, and just took the money out of savings.
I actually just found out I have the almost opposite problem. I didn't think we ever had overdraft protection on the account. I'd been meaning to go in and add it but had never gotten around to it. Well, turns out that we did previously have it and would still have it now... Except that my wife canceled the credit card that it was attached to earlier this year. Oww.
Ugh. I think it helped in our case that we did have money in a BOA account, just not in our checking which was the one that overdrafted. So they knew we had money that was accessible to them! I'm sorry for your situation. :-(
try calling and complaining and explaining everything. I have gotten out of it that way, but seriously, switch out of boa, its the worst bank i have experienced. they will pump you for money.
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Bottom line, banks are not charities and don't have to be nice to you.
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BUT one thing that BoA in particular does that IS assholish (and which they got sued for, I received a class action settlement thing in the mail for) is when you overdraft with, say, a $100 charge, and PRIOR TO THAT had made a few small charges, they will put through the high amount FIRST to overdraft you, and THEN put through all the smaller charges so they can give you an overdraft on all the smaller ones. THAT is wrong. i'm glad they got sued for that.
but in general i agree with you, people just need to keep track of their money. i am OCD about writing down everything in my register, i often take my account down to less than a dollar and never get overdrafts. it's really not that hard to keep track of your purchases!
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It's not a direct answer to either of those, but it may help reduce overdraft fees... Do you have any form of overdraft protection on your account? If not, is there a way you could set up a savings account (even depositing a little at a time) to use as overdraft protection for your checking account? If you have that available, sometimes then the overdraft/automatic transfer fee is less than it would be for a straight overdraft with only the checking account.
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