Mark says he was nickel and dimed — as well as quartered and penneyed — by Chase. He had an 89 cent positive balance on his credit card, but the bank debited the same amount so it wouldn’t owe him anything on his statement. Mark acknowledged that the amount of the transaction was insignificant, but was alarmed that Chase made an unauthorized charge on his account. He twisted the bank’s arm to get it to send him the 89 cents.

He writes:

I recently got my statement and had a credit balance that they decided to keep, they send me the following statement where they charged me a finance charge of exactly my credit balance. I called to find out what was going on and they were LESS than polite and offered no apology.

They reluctantly sent my credit in the form of a check, and included a letter about how they might assess a finance charge since this was requested in the middle of a billing cycle.

I am less then thrilled with their practices, it wasn’t a large sum, but how often do they get away with this? On the phone he said it was less then a dollar, so it wasn’t a big deal. I asked him if I owed them a dollar if they would just cancel it and he obviously said no.

Has a bank ever taken money out of your count in such a manner?

UPDATE: Reader Brian offers a possible explanation for Chase’s actions:

Chase refunded $0.89 of interests to his account which gave him a credit balance of -$0.89. No bank tends to leave an account negative so they charged the account $0.89 when they processed the check to be sent. The check was not sent because he called it was done automatically and is why the activity shows that way. This gave him a zero balance and a check for $0.89 arrived at his house as the OP stated. This is normal practice. You can verify this by reading the reason for the charge and how one is negative and one is positive. (-) on a statement is a refund and the other is a charge.

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