This happened to me once when I overpaid something - but I can't remember whether it was a phone bill or my car insurance (I'm thinking it was my car insurance, which is Geico). I overpaid them something like $4, and when I got my bill, they had zeroed it out and actually line-itemed it as a "small balance adjustment" for the $4. They just took it. Since it sounded official, I figured that was just policy. Now that I've been reading Consumerist, I will fight it if it ever happenes again. Has anyone else ever had this "small balance adjustment" happen? Was it Geico?

This reminds me of the (only slightly unrelated) time when my father underpaid the IRS by around a dollar. We got this extremely long letter (5 pages long) saying that we underpaid, but the amount is small enough that they won't trouble us with it.

The main thing that came to mind was that they spent almost a dollar sending us a letter telling them we owe a dollar, but to not worry about it? Kind of a whacky thing to do.

Something similar happened to my business account at Wells Fargo. Only there it was about $3500. The money was in a money market account and I hadn't touched it for about a year and a half. One month my money market statement failed to arrive. When I called to ask about the statement, they said the money had been place in an "unclaimed funds account". They had all of my contact information, and the account was linked to my checking and savings accounts. They could have contacted me easily. I guess it was not worth their time. Of course, all of my accounts were quickly closed and the money moved to another bank.

@Sherryness: Sounds like something Geico would do. I've heard lots of various complaints about them and have no plans to ever use them.

I dunno...I've seen people complain "The stupid bank spent $0.41 postage to mail me a $0.17 check! What morons!!"

I sense the next Superman movie plot lurking within this scheme.

@sburnap42: There is just no pleasing some people. People complaining is the default state of things. If all of them stop complaining... something is terribly wrong.

I make Macy's & Bloomingdales send me a check every month for a penny. I over pay the whole balance by 1 cent, and then request a check.. I hope they die for what they did to MF&Co

@sburnap42: Agreed. But as a customer or shareholder, I'd be pissed that the bank was spending more on postage than on the amount of the check.

@secretoftheeast:

I bet your dad never under paid them again, did he?

I deposited a check into my Wachovia ATM once, and miscalculated the amount of the checks. It was in Wachovia's favor by like 80 or so cents. I figured "Oh well, once a human gets the checks, they will figure it out and adjust it." WRONG. I had to fight for that 80 cents for about 3 weeks. Wachovia told me that "They don't worry about a few cents like that." I asked the rep: "So, you're telling me that if I deposit checks into my checking account each time for 50 cents more than the check is worth, Wachovia won't do anything?" She proceeded to feel pretty stupid.

So how long until Wachovia lets us know that they "take this seriously"?

It costs more to cut a check than the balance is worth. Plus, a lot of places WILL zero out a small shortage.

Having worked in a business that processed payments, one thing always bothered me -

If the bill says pay $58.33 by a certain date, why will one person send in $58.00, while another sends in $59.00, and yet another will send in some truly fantasy number?

Pay $58.33 - simple enough?

I had charged only $2 on my Bank One credit card one month and when the bill came it was for $0.00 and showed a $2 adjustment that wiped out the $2 that I owed. It seems they would rather just give me the $2 than ask for the payment. Maybe it costs more to process my payment so they figured it wasn't worth it or maybe some kind of courtesy since the amt was only $2?

@BugMeNot2: No he didn't, to my knowledge. That letter wouldn't have had much of an difference though, as the original underpaying was due to a bit of bad math on his part.

I do agree with you on what I think you implied, that sending the letters is mostly to keep people from trying any "funny business" which would make it definitely worth the cost, at least in theory.

@CG72: I saw that when I was a cashier in high school. People would round up on their checks and look at me crosseyed when I told them I cannot accept a check unless it's for the exact amount. i guess people are that bad in math that they can't balance a checkbook unless it ends in 0 cents each time.

Finding contact info for Armed Forces Bank is a damn near futile attempt. They don't exist except outside of the military... "Armed Forces" Bank and all. And what's worse is that it's not like AFB has an 800-number... they have like 20. Each for a different area. I mean, I once called to get the limit raised (only $500 when I cancelled), but they couldn't do it! They couldn't even transfer me! had to give me ANOTHER 800-number to call those people!

Anyway, 81¢ or 78¢ just isn't worth it. Fuck them. I cancelled. If your institution does this, cancel. Vote. Vote with dollars. They won't get any transaction fees from me no more. I mean shit, they exist because of their customers, if they had their shit together and had a) raised my limit to a more customary amount, b) put their interest rates on par with competitors, I would have used the card more frequently. Make me jump through hoops to get what should have been there anyway?

sheesh. No thanks.

And to those saying that people will complain about anything ("they sent me a 42¢ stamp for an 81¢ check that's dumb!"), I agree. And had they sent me a check I WOULD have said it was stupid. Let the credit balance sit there. I don't care. I know about it. Though yeah, I'd rather they sent it to me than STEAL it from me. Stupid's still better than crooked though, huh?

Sheesh. Grow up.

@sburnap42:

My fiancée received a $.02 check several times after she refused to deposit such a small amount. Just to get them to stop we ended up taking it to the bank. I'll bet they spent a few dollars sending us the checks.

My wife had an old Washington Mutual checking account with a few bucks laying around in it ($3.38 to be exact). One day, when updating Quicken, I noticed that WaMu decided they'd just steal it from her. They "closed DDA account" for $3.38, then reversed whatever the hell that means to bring it back to the original balance. Then they performed a "deposit correction" to effectively steal her money. The online ledger looks like this.

10/19/2007 DEPOSIT CORRECTION $3.38 $0.00
10/19/2007 *REVERSE CLOSE DDA ACCOUNT +$3.38 $3.38
10/19/2007 *CLOSE DDA ACCOUNT $3.38 $0.00
3/12/2007 --- $3.38

My wife tried to fight it, and never got a straight answer other than they were "investigating". Soon thereafter, we went to the bank to deposit a check into her account, and I figured I'd inquire as to the whereabouts of her money. We were then informed that the account had been closed. We did not request this. We had received no notification of the account closing, and still haven't to this day. Steal someone's money, then close the account on them. Seems pretty effective. I wish there was something that I could do about this.

Alright, my older files are in the basement and I'm not inclined to dig them out right now. Five or six years ago, I miswrote a check to pay my monthly CC. It's a Discover Card, and I've been smart and fortunate enough to be able to pay the entire balance each month I charge. I underpaid the bill by less than $1.00, it was simply a miswrite along the lines of writing a check for $163.21 for a bill of $162.31. Was I charged interest on the amount? Yes, I was. Was I charged interest on more than the $0.90-ish I cheated them? Yes, I was. I was charged around $5-6.00 based on my balance/double-cycle billing/whatever it is they have working for them.

So, to both readers, yes, this small amount should matter to you. It certainly pays the CC companies to make this matter to them.

My CLOSED (yet somehow mysteriously re-opened) BOA credit card account had $1.70 in overage. I even got a check in the mail for this 1.70 but shredded it because its more of a hassle to go and deposit it (and I was worried that it would reactivate my account, which as I found out was reactivated anyways).

After only 1 month the balance was removed and is now at 0.

BTW this happened within the last couple billing cycles (2 months)

Discover actually seems to do the right thing, and when I have had a $0.01 balance with them I received a "Small Balance Credit" automatically when the billing cycle closed. Guess they're smart enough to realize that even electronically processing a 1 cent payment costs more than 1 cent. No idea what the actual limit is to get such a credit. Although, I dislike Discover for other reasons.

Amex seems to be good about it too, in a slightly different manner. I primarily use Amex and have quite a few personal and small business cards with them. I had closed a small business account, and discovered several months later that somehow the account closed with $1 and some change on it, rather than $0 (and deleted it from my online view, so didn't realize it until I eventually got a paper statement), and had been accruing small amounts of interest for those months. No idea if the balance was my fault or theirs. I called Amex, and they told me that they hadn't been charging a late fee due to the balance being so low, hadn't reported the account as late, and that it wouldn't affect my other accounts. And they zeroed out the balance without even being asked. (Of course I have my share of bad customer service stories with Amex, but they've generally been pretty good compared to other card issuers.)

@Crumbles: Question, why would you fight it? But yes, Wachovia normally does manual adjustment for miscalculated check balances.

Ha, wonder what would happen if you called the cops and reported the theft in jurisdiction of their corporate headquarters...

Again, your mattress will never steal point oh two cents from you or anything!

I bought a fon router back when it cost a dollar on one of my credit cards. On my next statement the credit card company had just credited my card one dollar because the balance was so low. Unfortunately I have three different cards and do not remember which one did this. But it would seem that a credit card may also forgive small debt from your card also.

While I would never dare play the "blame the consumer" game, I have to be amused. It seems that in some cases companies can't really win: If a they issues a paper check for a few cents people are sure to ridicule them for it, and vice versa. Of course the default probably shouldn't be just pocket others' funds: if you walked into a grocery store and stole a 78 cent item they'd probably prosecute you for shoplifting.

My $0.02 and I hope nobody keeps it!

Cheers all

@Chongo: Bank of America NEVER closes your account. It will stay open forever to "clear" any incoming charges - which means when you pull all your money out, they will still keep it open and some how find a way to charge you an overdraft for something.

Certainly not doing a "blame the customer" here; but, in response to the second OPer's query, "If I owed Wachovia $0.78, would they just zero that out?"...

Well, I just finished paying off a purchase from Circuit City using the Chase card I got at CC to make the purchase (I know, I know. I wasn't as informed then...). Anyway, after I cut a check for what was left, I received one more bill. On it, I owed $1.15 in finance charges from the short time that the remaining balance was still there. Instead of me paying them, they wrote it off in the very same bill. It has it's own line item that specifically reads, "Write Off of Debit Purchase," so this is clearly a write off.

So, long story short, in some cases, company X probably will write off the small amount.

And, for those who care, I'm not *that* ashamed of my CC purchase. I got a nice TV and surround sound system with 12 months no interest. Paid it off in 9, so the only finance charges were on the monster cable I was stupid enough to buy. That's the only part that grieves me.

@Mike8813: Banks are regulated. Cano you not report this to the regulatory agency?

Joanna: How dare you judge me? I mean what are you? You think you're some kind of, like, angel here? No, you're just this penny-stealing... wanna-be criminal... man.
Peter Gibbons: Yeah, well, that may be. But at least I never slept with Lumbergh.

First thought...

@vastrightwing: Are you kidding? My couch and sofa and bed steal my lunch money every day :(

@ldavis480: In fact, They Will!

@purplesun: Exactly what I was thinking... Richard Prior's character schemed to take insignificant fractions of a cent from bank transactions. It is like that, only with inflation (fractions of a dollar? who knows).

There's a thread on FatWallet that I'm far too tired to find, but it's about exactly this, which banks/CCs forgive small balances/credits. It seems with some banks it DOES work in the opposite way, that is, if you have a very tiny amount due they write it off.

Anybody still have enough energy to find that thread? :)

Target once put me in collections for owing them $0.11. They called me early one Saturday morning in an attempt to collect. Once I established that they were spending at least $1 to have a human being call me and demand payment for $0.11 that I didn't even owe, the CSR apologized profusely, saying "this is one f*cked up company, I swear" before hanging up.

A little over a year ago I canceled a Sprint account after switching to T-Mobile.

They kept sending me statements showing $.31 credit. I had zero intent on dealing with their customer service to get my 31 cents. I was pretty amused by the continued statements.
The statements stopped after about 8 months. I assume they wasted a couple bucks to keep reminding me of my 31 cents, so I felt like the victor.

I would throw in my 2 cents but the bank adjusted it away. *rimshot*

But, really, I worked for a medium-sized Midwestern Bank's Proof department for several years. The policy is this: if someone makes an adding mistake for less than two dollars (over or under) and the teller does not catch it, the bank writes it off. It goes into a special account, which keeps itself relatively balanced since both types of errors go into it. Anything two dollars or above gets adjusted (fixed).

From what I can tell, it's the same policy at most banks.

@thorshammer: Now to cash in 1000 checks made for 1 dollar but deposited for 2 or 3. It's a 2000 dollars profit right there :D

@secretoftheeast: Several years ago, I got a letter from the IRS stating that I would be getting a special refund on my income taxes. A week after that I got a letter saying that the check will be sent within the next week. A week after that, I got the check. A week after that I got TWO letters saying that I should have received my check.

Total postage cost for this refund: $1.60
Amount of the refund: $1.20

All in all it actually cost me money to get this refund.

@playitagain2:

All banks 'escheat' funds if they've lost track of the owner. If all correspondence is returned and efforts to contact you fail they're required to track the account for a perriod of time and then (I believe) it's turned over to the state. If you've ever seen those notices in the paper that list thousands of people that are owed money that's what it's related to.

I know that's how it operates in Georgia--not sure of other states.

I regularly overpay my credit cards by a little bit ... generally 2 cents.
Some do write off the balance if it is under 1.00.

I don't expect someone to send me a check for amounts under a dollar.

What I DO expect is that the credit SHOULD stay on my account until I use the card again.

This is CapitalOne's policy as well.

Someone mentioned a while back that because it's a "credit" account apparently it's not legal to keep money in it, since it's not reported, and the bank's other accounts are FDIC insured... not sure how much truth there is to that.