A Sea Of Red

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8152278.stm

US smoker chokes on cost of habit

Josh Muszynski: 'I thought someone had bought Europe'

A man in the United States popped out to his local petrol station to buy a pack of cigarettes - only to find his card charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.

Why would that cause you to hate B of A? A minor inconvenience, and it may not have been the bank's fault.

What is this dude's limit on his credit card????

jcmanson wrote:Why would that cause you to hate B of A? A minor inconvenience, and it may not have been the bank's fault.

The bank would have had to authorize the charge.

jcmanson wrote:Why would that cause you to hate B of A? A minor inconvenience, and it may not have been the bank's fault.

Because of their system. Overdraft fees are insane there. Last week I had plenty of money in my account, so I got a redbox dvd. The next day it processed gas fills up from chicago to RI that I had done several days before, and left me with .50 in my account. Then it processed my redbox charge before I could go put money in, and I ended up like -$80 because it went over, then it tried doing the keep the change transfer and charged me 35, then an overdraft fee of 35 and some sort of processing fee for 15. I hate them because they should have fallen apart last fall and instead are barely hanging on by charging fees out my anus.

mrmacphisto wrote:

jcmanson wrote:Why would that cause you to hate B of A? A minor inconvenience, and it may not have been the bank's fault.

The bank would have had to authorize the charge.

Not necessarily. They could have, but generally retail stores send a "preauthorization" to the bank for guarantee of funds. This is 99.9% of the time done electronically. The store could have mistakenly sent the preauth for that absurd amount.

rueful wrote:

jcmanson wrote:Why would that cause you to hate B of A? A minor inconvenience, and it may not have been the bank's fault.

Because of their system. Overdraft fees are insane there. Last week I had plenty of money in my account, so I got a redbox dvd. The next day it processed gas fills up from chicago to RI that I had done several days before, and left me with .50 in my account. Then it processed my redbox charge before I could go put money in, and I ended up like -$80 because it went over, then it tried doing the keep the change transfer and charged me 35, then an overdraft fee of 35 and some sort of processing fee for 15. I hate them because they should have fallen apart last fall and instead are barely hanging on by charging fees out my anus.

May not necessarily be a bank of america problem. I know iTunes always has their billing screwed up with my bb&t card. i bought an iphone app on there two weeks ago for .99, i bought another one for 6.99 8 days ago. they were both didn't show up on my card until two days ago, and they put the two charges together to make it 7.98. they pretty much bill everything several days after it is actually purchased, it seems, and when they lump two together like that it really makes things complicated because then you are trying to figure out if it was a fraudulent charge or not since you didn't actually buy anything from iTunes for 7.98.

Overdraft fees make me so mad because they're just sky high. I'm at bb&t and it's $35 per transaction. I had transferred some money around and there was a delay on one of the transfers so 2 charges that coincidentally happened on that day just lost me $70. Clark Howard explained that overdrafting your account actually truely only costs a bank a few cents per overdraft. And they go ahead and take $35 from you. Why not just take $200 from me? What am I gonna do?

This is why I like the Bank of the James...they gave me a credit line (for no additional fee) in case I overdraft my checking account.

I think the best route is to go through a local bank. That's what I do, and the people are (gasp!) friendly. Whenever I've had an issue, they're quick to resolve it. You don't get that kind of customer service at the Big Banks.

Alot of banks will refund your overdraft charges if you've been a customer for any amount of time especially if you very rarely overdraft.

jcmanson wrote:

mrmacphisto wrote:

jcmanson wrote:Why would that cause you to hate B of A? A minor inconvenience, and it may not have been the bank's fault.

The bank would have had to authorize the charge.

Not necessarily. They could have, but generally retail stores send a "preauthorization" to the bank for guarantee of funds. This is 99.9% of the time done electronically. The store could have mistakenly sent the preauth for that absurd amount.

And the bank would have had to approve it, otherwise the absurd charge would not have gone through.