Overdrawn by overdraft protection

Like most people, I do not make enough money to keep a healthy savings account. And like many people, I find my checking account overdrawn more times than I’m willing to admit. So two months ago, my loving and caring banker suggested that I open a savings account for overdraft protection.

It sounded so simple: On the first day of every month $25 will be automatically transfered from Checking to Savings, and if there are “insufficient funds” when a check or debit charge comes in, money is drawn from Savings to avoid that $37.50 — can you believe that is what it is now? — overdraft fee.



Like it does every year, June 1 came. I had $18 in Checking. (Don’t ask me how I was going to pay my rent. I have a five-day grace period.) My loving banker went to Checking, transfered $25 to Savings and charged me $37.50 for being overdrawn.

It gets better!

I went to my banker. (I can already hear you saying, “Man, stop calling him your banker. Bill Gates has a banker; your broke ass has got a bunch of 18-year-old tellers — high school dropouts who earn twice as much as you do.) The teller told me that the transfer is done automatically and there was nothing he could do. (I told you the bank doesn’t even trust him to handle more than $25 after 12 a.m — when June, May, or Dec. 1 comes around — without a surveillance camera.)

I walked away from my teller to the ATM to get $20 of the $25 to go get a drink, though what I really wanted was a gun to blow my brains out. But I live in the suburbs, not the inner cities where $20 can get you a gun.

When I got to the ATM I found that my teller had taken the $25 from Savings to cover part of the Checking overdraft fee.

Worthy Note: On Friday June 6, I took this complaint to the bank and — contrary to what the teller had told me — a manager was able to help me satisfactorily.

No related posts.