US BANK RIPOFF OVERDRAFT ON POSITIVE BALANCE STEALS MONEY Minneapolis Minnesota

Greetings. Your complaint is the same as almost every other complaint on this site. Just insert a diff bank name: Wells Fargo, Chase, Washington Mutual, Bank of America, Wachovia, etc. When will you morons get it? MOST IF NOT ALL BANKS PROCESS transactions the same way. They basically charge the same fees also. This is because they are all regulated by the same federal government.

If interested, look up a series of federal regulations called Reg CC, Reg D and Reg E. Also go to the fdic.gov website. If you dont responsibly manage your checking, savings account or credit cards, you will be paying fees, bottom line. It doesnt matter WHO you bank with. When you open an account, you need to take 15 minutes to read thru the agreement and ask questions of the banker if you dont understand something. That is what they are there for.

Subsequently, they reversed some of the charges. As I explained before, if the merchant does not go through with the charge, you are entitled to a refund.


12/21/07 Reversed Charge-overdraft $34.00 $169.27
12/21/07 Reversed Charge-overdraft $34.00 $135.27
12/21/07 Reversed Charge-overdraft $34.00 $101.27
12/21/07 Reversed Charge-overdraft $34.00 $67.27
12/21/07 Reversed Charge-overdraft $34.00 $33.27

Charles, I appreciate the fact you posted your account information because it illustrates clearly the problems in using debit cards. At the very most, you should be using your debit card for purchases exceeding $25.00. You have over 11 transactions less than this amount in total over these many days and you can see how many NSF's (ODC's) it cost you. Let me give you an example of how the debit card cost you money you should not have had taken from you:

If you had taken out $100 in cash from the ATM on 12/12, and spent cash on the transactions under $25, the bank would have hit you with 5 NSF's (1 on 12/12, 2 on 12/13, 1 each on 12/14 and 12/17) and 3 NBF's which is $26 less taken from you and you still would have had $40 in cash still in your pocket (more or less) on 12/17/07. So, using the debit card in the manner you did cost you an additional $66 - money you would have if you used the debit card in the proper manner. I would shred that debit card, or at least not use it in the manner you are.

Happy Holidays to you.

Phil: I understand what you are saying. What I was informing the public about is pin number theft and the fact that if the pin is used 98% of the time the bank won't reverse it. US Bank's problem is charging OverDraftCharges against the available balance. Whether or not it is a pin or charge, if the available balance goes negative, you get hit with a ODC. Look at my account below (purchase locations removed for my protection.) It is clear that I have funds on the 12th, (but will not have funds on the 17th.) By charging ODCs against the available balance on the 12th, there is no way for me to make an additional deposit on the 12th, 13th, 14th, or 15th before these charges actually post to prevent the ONE ODC I would have gotten. Doing this US Bank's way, they have charged me 8 ODCs and 8 negative balance fees. (Talk about kicking a man when he is down.) How this happen? US Bank hid the charge for $10.42 in the list of charges and it didn't show up until it posted (I forgot to write it down.) This, subsequently, makes online banking worthless because you go to see your list of charges and it's not even there.

But, everyone, do the math.....remove the ODCs and the negative balance fee and you will see that I was only 78 short.

"Hard post" or "limbo post" US Bank works off of the avaiable balance. You can make a pin purchase and get an authorization just like a credit. Once the merchant closes their batch, pin purchases post usually in 24 hrs; credit purchases in three days. But if a merchant does a pin transaction and goes back and changes it to a smaller amount, you have already been assessed a ODC if your available balance went into the negative.

-Charles

12/17/07 Negative Balance Fee $21.00 -$293.78
12/17/07 Overdraft Charge $34.00 -$272.78

12/14/07 $9.07 -$238.78
12/14/07 Overdraft Charge $34.00 -$229.71
12/14/07 Overdraft Charge $34.00 -$195.71
12/14/07 Overdraft Charge $34.00 -$161.71
12/14/07 Overdraft Charge $34.00 -$127.71
12/14/07 Overdraft Charge $34.00 -$93.71

12/13/07 $7.38 -$59.71
12/13/07 $8.09 -$52.33
12/13/07 $10.42 -$44.24
12/13/07 $21.71 -$33.82
12/13/07 $42.48 -$12.11
12/13/07 Overdraft Charge $34.00 $30.37
12/13/07 Overdraft Charge $34.00 $64.37

12/12/07 $5.70 $98.37
12/12/07 $18.16 $104.07

12/11/07 $5.75 $122.23
12/11/07 $7.18 $127.98

12/10/07 $3.39 $135.16
12/10/07 $8.09 $138.55
12/10/07 $9.84 $146.64
12/10/07 $25.39 $156.48
12/10/07 $2.00 $181.87
12/10/07 $42.00 $183.87
12/10/07 $48.00 $225.87
12/10/07 $62.59 $273.87

I liked the analogy that the bank is floating our money due to the holds. The only problem is the bank has guaranteed to the merchant it will pay when the merchant submits the charges. So, they have sort of "paid" that money without hard posting your account. Before overdraft protection, banks didn't used to charge fees based on available balance, they just declined your purchases instead. Now, they decided that if you are making a purchase, you should know if that is going to overdraft you and if it does, you are "agreeing" to the overdraft.

They could just hard post your account at the time they guarantee the funds instead (that would really be floating). This would net them even more fees than they already get because of voided transactions and errors on the merchants part. This would cause even more problems with people's accounts. Hopefully they don't resort to this scenario.

By the way, the place I bank at does not charge overdraft fees based on available balance. Only on hard posts.

Charles, you gave some good information in your post, except for you telling people to use the credit function when making purchases.

Using the credit feature is what caused missy to get into overdraft and start this complaint.

When you use the credit function, that's what causes the problems, because it does go through a different network and the merchant generates the hold on your account for the amount of purchase.

Instead of just deducting the charges from your account as they would if you used the pin number.

Never use the debit feature (charge) always use your pin

Bank (Hold) period, it's during that hold period that the Bank gets you with overdraft charges or NSF fees. The Bank's computer factors in the holds against the balance in your account.

Hold amounts should not have anything to do with putting your account into overdraft, but it does.

A Hold is money that hasn't been sent out yet by the Bank, or in banking lingo, it hasn't hard posted yet.

Besides that, a lot of holds get dropped off without the bank ever sending money out to anyone. They never get posted or turn into hard transactions.

But, if you have those invalid holds against your account, the Bank's computer is very likely to kick out a NSF fee or overdraft charges, if the account balance is below the hold amounts.

When the Bank goes to clear that hold, (hard post the transaction) or (send the funds out) however you what to say it, that should be the only time that the Bank's computer should be able to kick out an overdraft or NSF fee.

Do you understand what I'm saying? If the funds aren't available in the customer's account at the time transaction gets hard posted, (the Bank sends out the money) that should be the only time that a overdraft charge or NSF fee should be allowed to be generated.

Because until the money actual leaves the control of the Bank, I don't care what status the Bank says that it's in, for they're accounting purposes, call it a hold status or whatever. The bottom line is, the Bank still has the money, and it's the customer's money, until the Bank sends it out.

Holds should have no bearing on overdrafts untill the hold turns into a hard posted transaction.

Check21 was passed by Congress to stop people from as they say from (floating checks). As it stands today the Bank is (floating transactions) from the use of (holds) against customer accounts. The difference being is that the Bank's are making Billion's of dollars a year off the backs of their customer's the way that they're doing it.

I once heard the expression one time that," if a man steals $20.00 you call him a thief," but if a man steals $20 Million you call him a banker."

I used to think that expression was funny, but now I believe it to be true.

Here's another expression," the Bank steals our money, and Congress drives the getaway car."

Let's hope for the sake of all the hard working American people, that this expression is not proved to be true also.

The bottom line is Holds and reorganizing the order of debits and credits against customer account's are some of the creative accounting methods that the banks use to steal money from their customers.

These practices should be illegal and stopped.

I used to work for US Bank and it is not just the customers that are getting hammered. I worked there for over three years and I had an extremely hard time figuring out how to explain the fees to the customer. I wasn't the only one either. I bet I worked with 30 people over my time there, and NO ONE was really able to describe why certain fees were charged. I tried to learn the system, and I did to a degree, but there was always some new tricky customer's account that I could not figure out. I felt like I was completely incompetent for a while, but I soon realized that the bank was doing this on purpose! Their online statements did not show what I could see as a banker and that did not match what the people at the customer service number were seeing.

No wonder we could not figure out how to explain it! I was unbelievable. I worked for a credit union before the bank and we never had issues like this. I felt bad for some of our customers and would occasionally reverse some of these fees, but the bank did not like that. We got a new manager and within her first two weeks she revoked my power to reverse anything. No matter what!

I always thought that it would be better to reverse half of a customer's fees and make them happy while still collecting fee income, but I was wrong. I soon found out that they were going to take ALL the fee money no matter what. If it lost the account, so be it. I have never worked for such a greedy, unfriendly company.

I absolutely do not bank there, nor did I when I actually worked for them. I would get my direct deposit into my US Bank account, take it out in cash, and take it to my other bank. I knew that if I got an overdraft fee as an employee, I had less chance to get my fee reversed than anyone. So I chose not to do business with my own company. I bet 80% of the employees I worked with did the same thing. Now if that doesn't raise a red flag, I don't know what does.

US Bank keeps two ledgers: available balance and account balance. According to their account agreement, the assessment of fees is based on your available balance. This is VERY significant, because you may have a million dollars in the account, but if only one dollar is available, a mistake by a cashier, or the type of business you are at, or even how you pay (debt or credit,) can cause you to be overdrawn.

Example One:

You go to the store and purchase gift of some shoes for $70 and there is only $80 in your account. One hour later, you return them because they do not fit, and you ask for a refund. The next day, you buy gas for $20. US Bank will charge an overdraft fee to your account.

The Reason:

A refund does not cancel the original charge. In fact, US Bank manages to process credits separate from the original charge. As such, even though the retailer has closed their batch and processed their debts and credits at the same time, US Bank, because it can hold authorizations for up to three days by law, immediately processes the authorization into a charge on the day of the batch's closing, and subsequently processes the credit authorization three days later on the third day.

As such, you are under the impression that your money is refunded, it actually isn't until the third day.

Example Two:

You and some friends eat at a dine in restaurant. The total is $90 and you leave a tip in cash. You have $95 dollars in your account. US Bank may charge an overdraft fee to your account.

The Reason:

Many restaurant's credit card machines are pre programmed by their merchant banks to get authorizations that include sometimes from 10 - 15% over the amount entered incase you choose to leave a tip on the card. When the merchant (the restaurant) batches out at the end of the night, the machine settles the authorization with the final amount. US Bank allows certain cardholders' cards to be authorized over the limit as what they refer to as a "courtesy." This "courtesy" is in case of emergency such as if you were in the middle of no where and had to buy a tire and didn't "really" have the money to do so. You could overdraft your account and settle up when you get home. Of course, as we all know this "courtesy" makes them a lot of money. So in this example, the restaurant has pushed the card holder into the "courtesy" and the available balance has become negative. As such US Bank will assess this card holder an overdraft fee. Three days later, they will process the authorization into a charge for the correct amount.

You may call US Bank at any time and ask them to turn the "courtesy" feature off.

Example Three:

You deposit a government check for $10 bringing the account balance to $1643. Your mortgage company takes their payment of $1639. US Bank will charge an overdraft fee to your account.

The Reason:

US Bank holds all deposits based on banking regulations. Nevertheless, government checks are supposed to be treated "like" cash and may be cashed at any bank. Employees, however, may not be familiar with all of the governmental agencies and departments. The teller is the one who types in the hold time.

Always alert the teller that you are depositing a government check. Moreover, always ask about hold times, if any, on all deposits.

On my close, safety knowledge: Avoid using debit.

If you have a debt card, always use the credit function unless you are at a bank's atm for greater security this holiday season. Smaller stores and gas stations, etc. often have cashiers and other people that hang around looking over your shoulder to get you pin number. They use devices that can read the machine that you just used, to learn of the information held on the magnetic strip of your card. Once they do that they can make a duplicate of your card. That coupled with your pin number can allow them to clean you out.

Debit charges have to be disputed with your bank. They can take up to 30 days to refund your money and they often require a police report to be filed and a notarized affidavit. This can really leave you sad for Christmas.

When you use the credit option, your charge is processed through a different computer system - - - the merchant processing system. By law, you can only be responsible for the first $50.00 of losses, the merchant bears the rest. Usually, these disputes are settled in 7 days.

Retailers will push you to use debit. Banks charge them $0.25 - 0.50 to process the sale, whereas the merchant processing system charges them a percentage of the sale, usually 1-2%. So on a $1000. Charge, they lose $10, as opposed to $0.25.

Be safe this holiday season, choose credit instead of debit. NEVER give your pin to anyone - - - remember cashiers steal too!

Erin, there is nothing in your report that would indicate the bank did anything illegal. Banks have the right to deny availability to your deposit for many reasons, including (1) out of state checks, (2) odd or potentially fraudulent checks. This is all a part of their policy and their right under the law. Usually, a teller will indicate if a check needs to have a hold placed on it, but if you went to an ATM to make the deposit....?

Now, there was a recent case against some banks for failure to disclose the policy; the argument wasn't the policy itself, but the notification to account holders. The account holders won, but the amount each person received from the lawsuit wasn't enough to cover one NSF fee. The law firm did pretty well.

I don't know if they can lien your house, but they can dent your credit so badly, you'll won't be able to buy anything on credit without paying an APR of about 70% on the money. Can they garnish wages? Only if a judge says they can, and if they do. it will happen.

You might try a Credit Union in the future. What happened to you at a bank would likely not happen at a CU. Best of luck.

I have a similar story, I just filed from four years ago. I had a positive balance and my money was held from me for a week when it wasn't supposed to be. I was charged numerous overdraft charges because the money was in the account but "not available" yet. Then they hit me again with more charges when they finally released my money. They were rude and hung up on me several times in trying to settle this. They caused me to go into the negative with all the unnecessary fees because of it's unavailablility and then when the checks that were written came through I was assessed another fee for those because there were not enough funds because of thier charges. I would be interested in knowing if there are class action suits like you have mentioned to help remedy this with US bank. The law firm I am working with currently says that they have numerous complaints against US bank and that this is something common the bank does but because they are so large and have so many people dependent on them because they will give accounts to anyone without credit checks. I am now being taken to small claims court for 1300.00 and they are going to try and garnish my wages and put a lien on my house because of this when I should never have owed the money in the first place.

Missy,

I can see the problem already. The first problem is your math!

You wrote:
"We where charged several overdraft fees because the bank holds your money making it look like you have nothing in your account. For example we had several charges over a weekend. I balanced my book it said we had 380.00 in the account. There was a few weekend charges for bills i paid total=290.00. Making my account balance 110.00. Well we spent 3.79 here and 2.46 there and ate out 47.87 and they assessed us 93.00 in overdraft fees!! We had a balance one day of 386 and got slammed with over 100.00 in overdraft fees".

Well, I hate to break it to you, but a $380 balance less $290 spent leaves a $90 balance, NOT $110!

Your second problem is using your debit card for very small purchases like $2 and $3. That is ridiculous! Asking for trouble.

The advice from the associate was good advice. You do need to learn how to balance a checkbook, AND you need to read and understand the funds availability policy of your bank.

You are spending money that is not yet posted AND available to your account.

And, no need to make a video of your account online, just print the page!

FYI..MOST banks post debits/charges before credits/deposits on the same business day. This is a very common practice.

AND, banking is tightly regulated. If they were actually doing something illegal, the FEDS would be already on them.

I used to work for wells fargo and that is NOT how it works there. This is where everyone gets messed up. They think they have the money that they just recently deposited (well duhhh)! Then they start to spend it.

How US BANK works:
Debits before credits, and thats why they are a rip off because what that means is anything you charge to your account(even if its the same day as the deposit was made) if going to go BEFORE the deposit NOT AFTER!

Wells Fargos way:
Credit before debits, that means the opposite obviously!
I hate banks, they rip you off ALL AROUND no matter how you look at it ALL of them are ripping us off in some way or another.
Wells Fargo really does care about their customers tho. I recommend you switch.

I would have to admit there have been times that I have gotten the bitchy phone op. but other than that there great. Oh and if you dont pay US BANK(or others) on time with the overdraft fee's its 7$ a day and you cant close your account until 30 days, then they threaten to send you to collections. Which wells fargo will NOT send your overdrafts to collections, and will NOT charge you 7$ a day.

It seems a lot of banks are doing that. I had a credit union that was doing that and I just changed credit unions to one that doesn't. Luckily I didn't have any overdrafts because I had the money to cover the double holds.

What they said was this. They hold for 48 hours. If the merchant submits their batch within that 48 hrs, the charge is hard posted, but the hold is still on for the remainder of the 48 hrs. Many merchants now submit their batch every night, after their day's receipts, so the money is subtracted from your account, but still stays on hold. This results in a double hold of your money.

I took proof to the credit union at least 7 times, showing the double hold on my money. They couldn't understand what I was talking about and everyone was telling me they don't "see it". I purposely made a $42.74 charge. Right after I made the charge, I printed my account and there was a hold of only $42.74 off my balance to reach the available balance. That night (after the merchant submitted their batch) my balance was reduced by $85.48 (regular balance was reduced by $42.74 and available balance was reduced by another $42.74). On Monday morning, the $42.74 was added back onto my available balance (the bank computers matched the hold with the charge and took off the hold). I took the printout to the credit union and they finally confessed that's what they do. Their off hours computers don't match the charge with the holds, so they keep the hold on while they debit your account for the charge too. However, if you go negative due to the double holding, you will have some fees assessed on Monday. And, on Monday, the hold is removed so their computer cannot tell you who they were holding money for (which would be your proof of the double hold), or why you were overdraft.

I resorted to going to the ATM and paying cash on the weekends and holidays. That is when it happens the most. It also happens late at night (after midnight). If you make a charge that day, and the merchant submits their charge after midnight, you will see the double hold between the hours of midnight and around 5:00 am.

What happened to us seems about the same as everyone else reported on here. I only wish i had researched it a long time ago.

We where charged several overdraft fees because the bank holds your money making it look like you have nothing in your account. For example we had several charges over a weekend. I balanced my book it said we had 380.00 in the account. There was a few weekend charges for bills i paid total=290.00. (sorry about earlier misprint system wouldnt let me fix it until the next day).

Well we spent 3.79 here and 2.46 there and ate out 47.87 and they assessed us 93.00 in overdraft fees!! We had a balance one day of 386 and got slammed with over 100.00 in overdraft fees.

They make it look like they are charging your account 2 time but they don't actually do that in the end. They HOLD the money over here, and charged it here 1 time but it makes your account look negative Since its on hold when they charge you. so they can assess a FEE.

I contacted the bank in Denver and they told me they would not take the fees off it was my fault. They further told me perhaps i need to learn how to balance my checkbook. I was actually screamed at and the associate told me the system was simple and i just did not get it. I have NEVER OVER-DRAFTED AN ACCOUNT IN MY LIFE (until i came to this bank)!

The next day i had a direct deposit post my account was positive 2015.00 and i got another overdraft fee for something on that day even though my account was positive. 1,000 on top of my deposit.

They just rip you off for overdraft fees. I still have my account online...this is hard to explain how they do this so my plans are to make a video of my account online to submit in a lawsuit. Who knows maybe one day someone will blow this out of the water and its going to be bigger then Enron. Someone at this bank is really doing something bad i hope the FEDS investigate this bank. Paper trails they cover good. but if they are smart the will open an account to track.

My hope is others read this and don't bank with them and get ripped off like i did. I also hope someone files a class action against them. They are doing illegal practices and committing fraud.