Suntrust Banking outragous overdraft fees Wilmington, North Carolina

Robert is a bank defender. He does not care that this is the first time this has ever happened to you and that the bank will not cut a struggling family a break. He does not care that the check didn't go through the day it was supposed to and caused all the fees to occur.

Now yes..you do need to be careful with the debit card as I can agree with Robert that it was seeing too much use when obviously a check didn't come in yet.

An option that would have saved you from ALL those fees from ever having a chance to happen in the first place..which Robert failed to mention..was if you were to opt out the banks so called "courtesy" overdraft protection service..which in most likelihood..the bank never offered you to opt out of it..or asked if you would like to sign up for the service when you first joined with them. Nor..did they explain to you what could happen or the potential consequences if you have this protection service..am I right?

Because if you didn't have this service..which up until recently a few banks required it as "mandatory"..the FIRST transaction that did not have the funds would have been declined..so that pack of smokes or sandwich or whatever it was..yes..you would have went without it, and maybe been a little embarrassed at the register..but you  would now be almost 700 dollars richer.

If I were in your shoes..since this is the first time you overdrafted the account..is not give up. Don't be rude or too defensive with the bank..but be FIRM..tell them you expect better treatment has a customer or you will report them over and over again to everyone until they cut you some slack. Bring the kids too and ask to speak with the bank manager in his/her office.

Okay I am trying to figure out how you got $648(plus two that they waived) in overdraft fees for a delay of a deposit by ONE day mid-week.  As that is about 20 overdraft fees(give or take a couple).  I don't think most people access their account that much in an entire week, let alone a single day.  You do not provide a lot of detail so a lot of this is admittedly a guess, but I would bet that it is pretty close to your situation.

I am going to hope that you know to not spend money that is in your account until it is AVAILABLE.  This means that if the money was going to be available on Tuesday you did not spend any money that would put you into overdraft before that time, in the hope of "floating funds".  Because if you did you would have overdrafted anyways.

As to how you probably got into this trouble.  First you did not verify that the funds were deposited.  It is not the banks fault that the deposit was delayed by a day.  Although some here will tell you that the bank intentionally held the funds for an extra day because they can see the future and know it would cause you all of these overdrafts.  Second is probably heavy debit card usage.  Debit cards are a great convenience, but if you do not keep tight control over your account they can be great trouble as well.  I would guess that most of the overdrafts came from Debit card purchases where the amount of the purchase was less than $10.

The best thing you can do in the future is verify that the funds are fully available before you spend it.  The second is go back to using cash for these small debit card transactions.  If you have any automatic debits tied to the account, stop those so that you can control when they come out.  Also, while you didn't say how you are managing your account, I hope you are using a register to keep track of your purchases.

Now, will doing these things guarantee you will never overdraft, NO.  But it will reduce the chance to almost zero and if you happen to overdraft it would be for a lot less in fees.  Also, just because you hear of doing all of this won't help you if the bank or a merchant makes an error, does not mean that you should not do everything possible for you to manage your account on the very small chance that someone else will make an error.