Hey... 78 bucks is 78 bucks... that covers your next 2 overdrafts... B of A is the win!... not!

So how long will it take to get every other bank that pulls this crap to start giving out refunds?

"If you're a former customer of BoA"

What if you are a current customer? I think I had an overdraft once around 2001.

I submitted my claim.

We'll see if I ever get it. I am still waiting for my diamond settlement and my 'credit card overseas' settlement.

Have they stopped these practices though?

I closed my B of A account for a reason... Now I get money too? SWEET!

This is a travesty. Bank of America has been pulling this sort of shady shit for at least 8-10 years. Paying $78 (maximum) to the few people that hear about the settlement and bother to file is a joke.

When you have a bank that EVERY SINGLE POLICY is designed to rip off its customers (even its bank managers admit this!) the greedy attorneys representing the class action need to, for once, stop worrying about their ripoff fees and TAKE THE CASE TO TRIAL so that the real truth comes out, lots of negative publicity happens, and enough people are outraged to insist that their elected officials take aggressive action.

I'd personally like to see multimillion dollar fines, personal liability by senior bank officials, and perhaps jail time.

We're sure this is legit, right? I'm wary about handing out my BoA account number.

I didnt see any security on that site, so i'm not chancing it. It gives you the alternative to enter an address so I just entered my street address.

@Murph1908: Hahaha...I'm also waiting for both of those. I've planned my 2009 household budget around them. Or not.

You can give your address (at the time you held the account) in you don't want to give your account number.

@MightyDwarf56: Exactly... my bank does this as well, under the excuse "well, you wouldn't want your mortgage to bounce so we always process the large ones first."

@Griffin Hammond: I believe there's an option to just give your address instead of your account number.

I've been with B of A since 1997, and still have my primary checking and savings with them.

At one point in May 2003 I was $280 overdrawn due to overdraft fees simply because B of A approved transactions I had made during a routine shopping trip in Austin, Texas on a Saturday morning.

Coffee, a few office supplies at various stores, and a 12 oz. Diet Coke...and a few small grocery purchases later in the day.

I called to check my available balance - I spoke with a rep to be sure everything that was supposed to be taken from my account actually had been deducted from the available balance, and she confirmed they had.

Lo and behold on Monday, my account was in serious overdraft.

I called B of A, described what I had done and to whom I spoke with, and was told matter of factly by the new rep that a large purchase had gone through, sending all additional purchases into overdraft.

I informed her that "large purchase (rent!)" had actually posted to my account three days before.

She said it in fact it had, but B of A reversed the charges that morning (midnight Sunday/Monday actually)due not "receiving the proper paperwork" from my rental company.

She refused to define "the proper paperwork".

And the 12 oz. Diet Coke?

It cost me $36.19.

@Chris Walters: Now if only I could remember which of my previous 5 addresses I lived at when I incurred overdraft fees...

I remember having a discussion with BoA customer service asking why they charge big purchases first, then little purchases, even if that's not the order you charged them in. It seemed designed to cost you multiple overdraft fees. They said it's because they want to satisfy the merchants who have been promised more money first, then the mercahnts who you have less of a financial promise to.

Thanks Consumerist for this post!!!! I am submitting my claim online right now.

I just closed my account because of overdraft fees. The smug asshole bank rep at the branch had the nerve to tell me that even though its wrong and not logical to post from high to low they can still do it and i am SOL. Fuck you Bank of America.

I opened a CD with them a few years ago. They told me if I opened a checking account with them I would get an extra 0.5% interest, and all I needed was to put $1.00 in it to open it up, so I did. A month later I'm being charged $18 a month because I had under a certain amount with them (I believe $10,000). Needless to say that whatever interest I was getting from the CD was DWARFED by the fees I was paying for the checking account.
The day after I got my statement I went and closed both CD and checking. I told them why and they looked like they could care less, as this is probably a regular thing they have to deal with.

Amadeo Giannini is rolling over in his grave.

This $35MM settlement brought to you by TARP. Thanks, taxpayers, for paying for our dirty tricks!

@calchip:

Good, logical points. Unfortunately, it contradicts completely with U.S. politics, bureaucracy, and corporate kickbacks. Until the landscape is dramatically changed, you won't see any of those things happen.

Rich people, corporations, and government: 149,873,498,234

American citizens, "open" trade, & democracy: 0

@ottawa_guy:

This is the only way to get a payment from the Settlement Fund of up to $78.

UP TO $78, not guaranteed $78.

@AnonymousFinger: It doesn't say on the settlement website you have to be a former customer, just that you had to have the account during those dates. The language they used is weird, though. I still have my account there but I just put 12/31/07 as the end date.

Hell yeah! I went through this crap with them more than once in the olden days of dirty Bank of America trips.

Wachovia used to do this to me all the time, I swear. I'm a college student, and honestly wasn't that fiscally responsible. But I don't think that's the only explanation for why fees like 5 dollar trips to the restaurant would be assessed multiple weeks after the purchase, and after big purchases had drained all my money.

are you serious? all these things are common practice at chase. as a small business owner, in 6 months they found over $800 in ways to charge me fees..

@jblake1: nope... they got me just last month. (yeah, it was my own fault... I have keep the change savings rollovers, forgot about that, and it went into my overdraft protection which charges a $10 fee... which put me into an actual overdraft. a $5 latte bought two hours before my paycheck direct deposited cost me $105 thanks to high to low processing.

@TheBitterFoodie: I have experienced firsthand that exact same kind of fuckery. The reversing of posted transactions, excuses about merchant holds and verifications, and the like.

Steaming. Mad.

And did they fix it? Absolutely not.

I always keep a significant balance on my checking account in order to avoid overdraft fees. I've lost interest on this money but I always ration that any overdraft fees would dwarf any interest earned.

Should I try to get in on the settlement although I've never been hit with any fees? I've lost more than $78 in lost interest...

Banks and credit unions collect about $17.5 billion in overdraft fees per year, the Center for Responsible Lending says.
•This year, Bank of America raised the fee charged on the first day a customer overdraws to $25 from $20. The bank also raised the number of times a customer can be hit with this fee per day to seven from five. And it's told customers that most signature debit-card transactions will reduce their balances that same day and be subject to fees if there isn't enough money in the account. Before, consumers often avoided this fee if they deposited money before a purchase cleared.

Bank of America spokeswoman Diane Wagner says the bank adjusts fees to "establish more uniform pricing for our national franchise. ????

More horsesh*t, brought to you by Bank of America, the bank of opportunistic policies.

@HungryTuna: If you want to be denied your claim, and possibly arrested, sure! :)

@TheBitterFoodie: Yes, that is the crux of the problem: By deducting largest first the bank is turning the whole way everyone learned to reconcile their checkbooks on its ear. And somehow they don't seem to be able to credit deposits any quicker or in the largest to smallest order.

Hmmmmmmmmmm, wonder why.

And BoA needed a bailout why? Seems like they're already good at cheating their customers, so why let them cheat the people that AREN'T their customers?

When I first heard about the asshattery of BoA I asked my Credit union about how they handled transactions, and they go by the time stamp of the transaction and don't re-sort any of them. So my payroll direct deposit comes in at 12:00AM every Friday and doesn't get put behind any withdrawls to put me in overdraft.

How come if I go and steal $78 from someone's purse, I will go to Jail for a significant time and have a record forever...

And if BoA steals this from 1,000,000 purses, they get some measly slap on the wrist?

What if I went to court for theft and I was just like, oh, OK, you caught me, here's the money back. C-ya!

We need serious prison time for whole swaths of executives in corporations that act in an illegal manner. That will get the corporate culture cleaned up fast.

Giving any sort of fine to a multi-billion dollar corp is a joke.

$78 doesn't even put a DENT in some of these customers' losses. If I were in their position, I would be one of the first to line up and send a letter of objection to the court if I had incurred one red cent above $78 from their predatory practices. Shame of Bank of America.

I had a similar experience with Citizens Bank in NYS. They "Graciously" removed 1/2 of the overdraft fees, but we still were out $120 due to their rearranging of charges.

We soon joined our credit union, and we've never been happier.

U.S. Bank does this sort of thing too--

You shouldn't have to cushion your checking account but you do-- most people who have the cash to do so have several hundred extra dollars tied to checking they would otherwise have earning interest somewhere precisely because the banks are so dishonest.

And we wonder why we have a savings crisis in this country? Not one bank should get a dime of bailout money.

Darn. It works for current customers, but since I use my credit card for everything to accrue awards and avoid such a thing, I haven't had such a fee, so no settlement for me.

Wells Fargo is currently being sued for the same thing. I've been with them for 9 years. Two years ago, I got screwed royally on a business trip to Mexico. My company delayed my expense check so I had to use my own money. Then someone was suppose to deposit the check in my account while I was still there, but didn't happen. Once everything was said and done, I paid $800 in overdrafts and neither my company or Wells Fargo would help me. Regardless of what settlement they come to with WF, I'm considering opting out of the class action suit. I'm sure it will be along the same lines as BofA's.

[www.illegalbankfees.com]

B of A put the last nail in my coffin of respect when they started giving checking accounts to illegals.

@calchip: If you feel that strongly you can always exlude your self from the class and file your own suit.

But you should know, the lawyer's job is to above all else, do what's best for the client. Class actions are messy and dont all end with Erin Brochavich (spelling) endings.

If you want multi-million dollar fines then RTFA, BoA will pay $35,000,000.

Now with that said, you should know, I really hate BoA, I mean an unnatural want to impale Ken Lewis with a jagged branch, beat him to the ground, put one foot on his chest and stake the US Flag in him then say something witty like "It's been revoked" or "Insufficient Funds".

If you can submit a claim it's your duty to object to it and demand that bank of America fix the overdraft issues and pay back all the overdraft money they collected. It makes no sense to just give everyone 78 dollars when they can validate exactly how much in overdraft fees each person was charged. Bank of America should return all overdraft fees + fair damages and be forced to only charge a standard credit card rate for overdrafts in the future.

Wait they did what? I thought all banks could and did do this. Desert schools was like this to me, they had higher $ charges in first and let me overdraft my account to +1,200$. I never paid them back, mainly because they never asked. I never closed the account.

When I had overdrafed from my business trip, my final balance when i realized what happened was -$2000. For 9 full days my account was overdrawn and WF kept approving my transactions. When I asked why they didn't decline any of them or give me a courtesy call, the CSR couldn't give me any good reason.

@calchip: Uh, and who is going to pay for the costs of TAKING THE CASE TO TRIAL? You? You don't do your job for free, but you think lawyers should?

@JGKojak:

Yup, US Tank did the same to me. They held 5 or so small transactions for a week and once a large purchase came through they ran all these smaller transactions through and charged me a $30 fee for every transaction. I talked to the bank manager and he said they have no control over when transaction go through and wouldn't give me any break on the fees. You can't tell me places like McDonalds aren't processing credit transactions daily, it would make no sense for them to wait a week to push a $5 purchase through.

So I ran my account several hundred dollars negative, now they can spend several hundred trying to get that money back from me. I don't care about credit score anymore, I'm going cash only.

@Griffin Hammond: The option to give your address (at least online) is way too small to let you type in your address. Also, if you try typing in something else in the account number box (like "Same as above"), you get an "Invalid Account Number" warning.

Can you claim the money merely for being a customer, or do you actually have had to have an overdraft fee?

how do we know 100% that this isn't a scam? i don't see any news articles related to this class action suit at all.

@Matt Keithley: Im with you. They need my account number? After ammassing all of my personal information? And then if you try to type "your previous address" in the bar it only holds like 12 characters? Seems pretty shady to me...

@Davan: yeah, i'm holding off until i know for sure...

I still don't understand why people are complaining about the way Bank of America posts it's transactions. I mean the policy is written in black and white in the agreement that we all sign when we get the account; I know i have seen and read it! So if this is a surprise to anyone then that just proves that you arent doing your homework and being responsible for your finances and that means that I have no sympathy for you. I have banked with then for years and have never had a problem.

When I first had the account I did overdraft my account and payed the fees, but guess what I learned from it and never over drew my account again. I think that many of the people who bitch and complain about this are those that don't care to take the time and learn about there accounts. In fact I know that is the case since I use to work for the bank a few years ago (I was a customer service rep which is the bottom of the totem pole so im not getting paid for these comments) and it was the same type of people calling about fees; the people who don't check there accounts and they spend more then they have.

Which brings me to my next point. Accounts would not become over drawn if people didn't spend more then they have. I don't overdraw my account because I spend within my limits. there is no excuse to spend more money then you have. Learn to budget. No one else is going to do it for you we are all adults and we should know how to do these symbol things.