Playing Eenie Meenie Miney Moe with my bank accounts

[Andara Bledin]

She's since been sent a letter telling her that she needs to either close her old account, or be charged for her checking account (wtf? who charges for a checking account? :-/)

Most banks charge for most types of checking accounts. I don't pay anything because I have direct deposit, but if I didn't, they'd have some nominal monthly fee they'd charge me for the privilege of them holding my money.

^-.-^

[phantasy]

My bank charges overdraft fees on my checking account. Good thing I've never overdrawn it.

My place of work, the online pharmacy also has the "auto-refill". You choose how many refills you want, how many days in between them and let it go. I think it's a terrible idea. People should just go online and order when they see that their bottle is about to be empty.
I get all kinds of calls like "I did NOT authorize this! This is fraud!". My company would never send you automatically refilled packages unless you chose the option. It's understandable, you thought it was a good idea at the time, and now it's not.

I hate it when the customer also says "But I would NEVER choose that option!"

When I get these calls, I always deactivate the auto-refill, but we can't do anything once the package was sent, and the customer signed for it when they recieved it.
If you didn't order it, send it back! That's only if you didn't sign for it!

In your case, it sounds a little fishy. Always have paperwork when you sign up for auto-pay and stuff like that. Keep track of it. I have autopay on my anti-spyware on my computer, and was very shocked when they billed me for $60. Then I forgot they notified me, but to an old email address that I don't use anymore. My fault in that case, not theirs.

[Midorikawa]

Most banks charge for most types of checking accounts.

Apparently I just find it a bit weird to be charged $2 a month for having a checking account. My old Centennial Bank (one that was closed by the FDIC) checking account actually earned more in interest than any savings account I've ever had. My Texas bank account never charged me unless I overdrafted. My new bank account with USAA gives me cash back on purchases made on certain items, like food, gas, etc.

I guess since I've never seen it before it just strikes me as weird, but then again, I refuse to use big banks, and no smaller bank I've ever looked into did that. :-P

[bainsidhe]

To the OP, you may want to explain to your bank what happened before issuing a fraud alert. The bank will see the mistaken charge was refunded, which means you're back in the positive, and they can (hopefully) remove the overdraft charges. Yes this is more of your time and frustration involved in this situation, but removing the overdraft fees is something only your bank can do. Making this other company pay for the overdraft fees may sound like a good idea, but it doesn't change the fact you now have a history of overdrawing your account. Getting the bank to work with you might put your financial history in better standing.

[Midorikawa]

To the OP, you may want to explain to your bank what happened before issuing a fraud alert.

Already have. They noted it, and will fix it once I get the fraud report sent in.

[HYHYBT]

I don't quite understand how they were even *able* to draw money out of the wrong account. How did they get the information to do it?

[Andara Bledin]

There are a few ways to draw money out of the wrong account.

One is to have out-dated historical records that aren't properly noted and removed from the live records. I actually tried to do something similar with credit cards today because the record we had on file had not been updated properly. >.< Needless to say, I have now done so.

Another is for the bank to screw things up. Harder to do in this sort of situation, but if you have multiple accounts (even if the old ones are closed), you can run into this. I still have the same joint account I used when the ex and I were still together (I'll close it when I start carrying a real balance), and he once called the bank to have them transfer money from one of his accounts to another of his accounts. They took it from joint account, instead, in spite of the fact that he'd specifically given the account number to transfer from. I discovered it the evening it happened, called him, he called BofA, and it was all fixed the next morning.

You have to be careful with autopay setups and only ever allow people you trust to not be crooks, because even if you close a bank account, they can still draw payments from it. Scary stuff. Which is why my auto-pay setups are all drawn from my credit card.

^-.-^

[Midorikawa]

I don't quite understand how they were even *able* to draw money out of the wrong account. How did they get the information to do it?

Because that was my main bank account for the first year I was here in Utah. I removed it, moved to the new bank, which worked fine, until the FDIC closed the bank, then moved the info to the new account I have today, and then they decided to draw from the Texas bank because the newest account wasn't active in the automatic debit system yet, and the second one was closed entirely.

[Racket_Man]

I think I told this story before

about a 1 year before my Ex and I split up (5 years) ago we started to seperate our finances. she opened a new checking account and took herself off of our joint checking account (both accounts at the same bank). all of the proper paperwork for her new account and mine (old joint) account was produced, verified and signed AT THE BANK. her debt card for the (now) my account was deactivated and shredded right then and there and a new one for her new account was put in for.

about 2 years ago, when my debt card was due to renew, I received my new card. but lo and behold there were 2 cards in the packet. one in MY name and one in HER name even though she had NOT been on this account for like 3 years. aftera few calls to the banks CS line, the following was determined:

1. the bank used an outside service to produce their debt cards
2. for some reason unknown to them my Ex's name was NOT removed from the database of account info the outside service had
3. all my Ex's info from my account was supposedly removed after this incident

I will see what happens in a year when my card is up for renewal again

the moral: be very wary of banks these days as you never know who is ACTUALLY using, manipulating or keeping your data. this could have caused me a dozen different way of pain