Rest a little easier, the “Russian Connection” ATM scammers have been captured.
banking
Landlord Cancels Deposit Check, Makes Other Checks Bounce, Sucks
By 3.6.06
Thanks to this, several of his checks bounced and he got lots of insufficient fund fees.
Massive Citibank Fraud Alert
By 3.6.06
Boing Boing posted a link yesterday to a first-hand account of a massive Citibank fraud crisis which has frozen countless people out of their accounts. No real details on what has actually occurred at Citibank have been given, but a lot of people have been impacted with their Citibank ATM and Credit Cards alike.
Disentangling Automatic Payments Laborious, Some Discover
By 2.23.06
Automated payments may be handy but cancelling them can be like eradicating a persistent tapeworm, some consumers find.
Consumers Speak: Bank of America’s Missing Envelope
By 1.27.06
ve been rejected and subsequently sent to another account. My money, as of this writing, is still being held and I am waiting for it to be released to me.
Stolen Debit Card Leaves Writer No Recourse
By 1.2.06
Steve Lopez of the LA Times has a don’t-miss personal anecdote about his travails dealing with his bank after his debit card number was stolen. His bank ultimately decided that the charges were his responsibility, leaving him short over two grand. The bank’s unwillingness to discuss his claim has left him with little recourse. A phone rep told him his previous conversations weren’t able to be reviewed because the rep “can’t always get access to those tapes,” and John Hall of the American Bankers Association told him, in essence, to keep calling until he got it resolved, despite the fact that that’s exactly what Lopez has been doing.
WaMu Charging ATM Fees for Non-Customers
By 12.22.05
This news is a bit crusty, but we just now noticed it, and it affects us directly, so suck it up. Washington Mutual, who not two years ago pushed a massive ‘The Buck-Fifty Stops Here’ campaign in New York to promote their no-cost ATMs, has—wait for it—started charging ATM fees for non-customers. We certainly don’t recall a huge ad campaign telling everyone the fees were being reinstated after five years.
Chase Chased: We Only Give You Your Money Because Uncle Sam Says We Have To
By 12.16.05
Reader Michael D. saw the post yesterday about Chase’s deposit weirdness, where they hold onto your money from big deposits for days and then eke it out bit by bit unless you fill out special forms. Michael decided to ask Chase why they were so retarded, and if their parents really told them paint chips were wall candy.
Consumers Speak: Chase Holds Deposits Unless ‘Special Forms’ Used
By 12.15.05
Crispin B writes:
I’ve been with Chase for a long time. I have money from the dot-com days. I’ve run a lot of that money through them – at one point just over a million dollars following the sale of my home. Did that earn me any respect? No. They treat me just like I was back in college, living from paycheck to paycheck. They’ve nickel-and-dimed me the whole time. Charges for this, charges for that, all the while providing me with piddling interest rates and crap customer service.
Bank of America’s Change Jar: There Must Be Evil Here Somewhere
By 12.14.05
Since we’ve spent a large portion of our day tearing at Bank of America, we thought we’d offer this recommendation for a new savings program, sent in by (probably astroturf) reader Greg. It seems Bank of America has a new program that rounds up your debit charges to the nearest dollar, then puts the change in a savings account. Gamey, but we like it.
But here’s the interesting part: for the first 3 months they’ll match it up to $250. So if you rack up $250 or more in change over 3 months, BofA will give you $250. After 3 months, they’ll continue to match but only at 5%.
Bank Bans Clocks to Confuse Customers
By 12.14.05
If we were the gnarlled toothed ogres who work at NatWest bank, we would call removing all clocks from the public waiting areas a ‘customer hack.’ Rather than work to shorten the lines of customers at NatWest, bank managers have chosen to instead remove all timepieces from the walls.
One worker said: “If people have been standing waiting to see a cashier for a long time they can get very cross.
Bankhackery: Open an Account at Every Bank
By 12.14.05
This is definitely one of those tricks that seems so obvious that there must be a reason few people do it. And there is: It’s a pain in the ass. But when you’re a small business owner who takes a lot of personal checks (and are a stellar record keeper), it’s a pretty great idea.
For many years, I have done computer consulting on the side for various businesses and the dreaded Home User. I’ve since dropped just about all of my home users as I don’t have the time and generally they are a royal pain in the ass.
Are Credit Unions Really Better Than Banks?
By 12.14.05
Reader Jim Walls offers this advice about how to avoid banks entirely, but going to its socialist equivalent, the credit union. We thought it was an interesting, succinct explanation on why you might want to look at credit unions as the panacea for all our banking problems.
International ATM Mystery Fees
By 12.13.05
Since it looks like we’re having a Bank of America day, have another mystery. Gawker jocker Scott Kidder took a five-dollar hit to his BoA account each time he got out money in Europe. Painful, but in an ‘all banks ream you for international ATM fees’ way. But there were always additional percentage-based charge with each transaction, and the BoA customer care couldn’t tell Scott where it came from.
Bank of America’s Overdraft Policy Optimized for Maximum Penalty?
By 12.13.05
Reader Steve J writes:
A long time BofA account holder who enjoys living dangerously with his balance, I’ve had my pocket picked to the tune of $300-400 with this artful setup. It’s rather simple. If you have multiple transactions in a same day they process the largest dollar amount first. This means that if you overdraw your account on a day where you have a particularly large transactions, you end up paying the maximum overdraft fee allowed by math. A numerical example to illustrate:
Overdraft Charges: Fallen from Grace Periods
By 12.13.05
Though no representative of Bank of America will tell me what exact times each transaction occurred, they assured me that they know that the bad one came first, and that even though they have no specific record of it, they can assure me that I had a negative balance… for an undetermined period of time.
Cutting it close is user error, for sure, but we can remember (imagine?) a time when banks used to cover for a person when paychecks crossed the finish line just behind a check for eighty-nine cents. (We have a thing for those little brown coconut donuts.)
