Wells Fargo ,once Wachovia Double Standard: After hours transfers and purchases equal fees! Atlanta Georgia

Don't even bother with what is ethical or not; that is a preposterous and nonsense argument you make. What is ethical to you is not ethical to me or to a bank, and since none of the parties here determines what is ethical or not is the exact reason why nobody in their right mind looks at this from an ethics standpoint. That's why we have agreements and laws on the books to set uniform standards for behavior, quantify and qualify standards, and not leave things to subjectivity. As I said, whenever you available balance goes into the negative, you will overdraft. Your transfer from the other account needed to be AVAILABLE before you spent money, not after, and not while the transaction was processing. When you spent that money with a debit card, that money was gone, you were overdrawn, and the overdraft parade begins.

In the future - think of it this way: Unless you can run faster than the speed of light - the speed in which your debit transactions race to the bank for processing - you will lose the race, as you did here. That speed is 186,000 miles per second. Stop using your debit card and you will never be subjected to this by the bank.

Best of luck to you.

The reality is that using an account register and reconciling that register with a monthly account statement from the bank will prevent any account holder from causing any NSF/OD fees.

The majority (if not all) of the reports I've read about NSF/OD fees have common behaviors of the account holders:

using atm cards for everyday purchases.
using more than ONE card attached to the account (husband and wife)
using atm cards for online purchases.
using atm cards for 'auto-bill pay' (autodebits)
relying upon telephone or online account balances to determine what money is available for that shopping trip to Walmart.
*NOT using an account register.
*not reconciling an account register with the scheduled monthly account statement generated by the bank.

Ways to avoid these NSF/OD fees:

1. Use an account register and reconcile the account register with a monthly written statement generated by the bank. If the bank is not mailing statements, contact customer service to have monthly statements MAILED to you.

1a. Be aware of ATM fees, such as the 'non-bank ATM fee' that most banks charge when you use an ATM that is not owned by your bank to make a withdrawal and post that fee in your account register immediately.

1b. Also be aware of any monthly 'account service fee' charged by your bank and post that to your register on the appropriate date.

2. Do NOT GIVE bank account information (or ATM card info) to any merchant, service provider, utility, online service to pay for services and goods. Use a REAL credit card for this purpose (either secured cc or unsecured cc.) Do not setup any automatic deposit to an account that is attached to said cc-NO auto payments to CC company-mail a check each month. If the entity demanding payment makes a mistake, you're gonna have a host of problems and risk OD/NSF fees.

3. Do NOT use an ATM card for everyday expenses-USE CASH. Establish a monthly budget and withdrawal a weekly 'allowance' for every day expenses such as 'milk and bread' from the corner store, Burger King, etc. This will reduce the amount of transactions on the bank account which in turn makes RECONCILING the account and detecting ERRORS easier to accomplish. Again, if the entity demanding payment makes a mistake, you're gonna risk NSF/OD fees.

4. Do not shop with the ATM card-use a real credit card. A real credit card offers protections that you don't have with an ATM card. If the merchant/service makes a mistake, you can dispute it with the CC company WITHOUT getting any OD/NSF. Not true if you use an ATM card-if the merchant makes a mistake, your money is gone until you can convince your bank to give it back, as well as OD/NSF fees.

5. ONLY ONE ATM CARD to one account. Do NOT have 2 or more atm cards for one bank account. Having 'his and hers' ATM cards attached to the same account is the same as in the old days when some folks would have 2 checkbooks for writing checks. It was an invitation to disaster then, and it is today.

6. Verify that deposits to the account have actually cleared. Deposits can take anywhere between 1 and 5 BUSINESS days to clear depending on the type and/or source of the deposit.

Follow ALL of these suggestions and you will NEVER pay an OD/NSF fee again unless it is a LEGITIMATE bank error, and then the bank will gladly and quickly rectify the situation and credit any fees generated as well as contact payees and cover any fees the payees assess to you.

This is a tried and true method to avoid these fees. It works EVERY TIME it's tried.

[If your account goes into the negative at any point, you will incur a fee.]JIM
[if you go negetive any time your bank will charge you] BETTY

Actually this is not true. If a transfer of money between accounts is made during banking hours, but shortly after an overdrawn purchase was made during banking hours, the overdrawn purchase during hours does not incur a fee, because additional money was added to the account to cover it during banking hours.

From what I have come to understand, banks do NOT process charges or transfers according to the order they are made in. They process them according to when they "officially" arrive from the merchant, monetary value, and--now I know--how its posted also depends on if it is a transfer/deposit or a debit.
If I had made the after hours transfer BEFORE going to the grocery store and making an after hours purchase, I STILL would have incurred the $35 fee because of the fact that the bank (as of recently) doesn't acknowledge after hours transfers until the next day, but purchases the same day, even if the transfer came before the purchase.
Even though the bank knows EXACTLY the day and time a debit purchase is made, or an online transfer is made, they post fees according to how they decide they want to process the transactions, not according to how the transactions actually occurred.
If my bank had said to me, "Our policy is that you incur a fee if the time of the transfer or deposit is after the time of the purchase" I would not be upset. Fair enough. I'm a just and reasonable person, and expect similar in return. But that is NOT the policy of the bank. Their policy is that after hours transfers are acknowledged the next day, while after hours purchases are acknowledge the same day regardless of order.
THAT is a double standard. Period. And the ONLY reason for holding that two-faced policy is to extract fees from customers. After all, how many people do their online banking and shopping after a days work? If you have a legitimate, consumer friendly, reason why a bank would practice this, I would love to learn it.
Computer hardware and software does not lock up and go to sleep at night. So whatever technical program the bank company has that can chug through all the after hours purchases made by debit at various vendors and post them the same day, is also perfectly capable of chugging through the lesser amount of after-hours online digital transfers. Because computers and software don't keep hours like people do. If the circuits can do the work for the purchases, they can do the same work for the transfers.

And yes, Jim, I know it's legal (for now). But it is still a double standard put in place to extract fees, and that is not right. Just because a practice is currently legal, does NOT mean that practice isn't ethically wrong and should be made illegal.
And perhaps the Wachovia branch in your state does this kind of shady transaction behavior regularly, but as a Wachovia customer in Atlanta for the last few years this was never a problem for me until recently (meaning until the Wells Fargo buyout). As I said before, I have printed hard copy proof that can't be argued with.
I did sign a banking agreement with Wachovia. But there is not one single piece of Wells Fargo stationary that has my signature on it. I have no contract with Wells Fargo. What victimization I accrue under their bank name is fair game.

And I used to have overdraft protection from my savings account (though it was a $10 fee if ever I needed the privilege. Guess those computer programs got digital kids to feed, eh?). However due to a string of expensive circumstances (death, illness, car breaking down, family crisis...not that you care), I have had to close down both of my two savings accounts and rack up my credit card debt just to get myself and my mother through on a pitiful graduate student's salary. So sorry, overdraft protection just isn't an option right now. I sure as hell wish it was. But at least I have two credit unions to choose from when I leave Wells Fargo/Wachovia. That option is available to me.

First of all, there has been no change is processing yet due to the purchase of Wachovia. Both banks are still operating as separate entities. However, the cutoff time for on online transfer is 9 PM ET. If the transfer is before that time then it will post the same business day you are doing the transfer. If it is after 9 PM (even by a minute) then it will not post until the next business day. But you have to have the money available in the account when you make the purchase to make sure you don't have any fees accessed.

We've all heard "don't wirte the check if there's not money in the account" right? Well the same things go with debit cards, transfers, online banking, mobile banking... etc... you get my drift.

All these new technologies make banking more convienent, however like Jim said... if you go negetive any time your bank will charge you.

Your bank is allowing you to make that purchase on a negative balance, and for this service you have to pay them. Even if it is so slight, and you try to transfer to cover it immediatly.

My recomendation is to sign up for some type of overdraft protection, either a savings to transfer or a line of credit. Most institutions have both of these features available. Typically the fees on overdraft transfers are minimal.

Good luck

If your account goes into the negative at any point, you will incur a fee. It is irrelevant that the transactions occurred the same day. Debits will always post before credits do to the account - this si all legal and part of the agreement you signed. If you're going to overdraft, be prepared to accept the consequence.

BTW - this would have happened to you at Wachovia too. Those guys invented the unavailable funds fee the rest of the industry uses today.