Bank Fees for Nothing at All.

and you can BANK on it.

Many, many years ago (more than a few at any rate) I found a job at Bank of America. I was fresh out of college, trying to be a father to an infant and going through a divorce all at the ripe old age of 22. The job was as a Teller and my first real stop was at “Teller School.” Once I had the basics down I actually enjoyed most of my time as a Teller. I got to interact with not only my co-workers (a quite young crowd at 914) but customers as well. The branch was located in the picturesque community of Marina del Rey, a mere hop, skip and jump from my undergraduate school “On the Bluff.” After some time as a Teller I learned to be a Bookkeeper. One of my jobs in that role was to review incoming checks and other debits that were either rejected by our computer posting system for Non Sufficient Funds or that had been paid by the system but created an overdraft on the relevant checking account. To this day I remember the charge for each of these events. If your account had been overdrawn, you were charged a fee of $3 because a human being had reviewed your account and decided to let the overdraft stand rather than return the check. If your check had “bounced” the fee was $5 because that same human being had to physically return the check to the bank that had presented it. Seems pretty reasonable because - it was (though I may have the numbers backwards). In the future I may write about the bloody process of “pay filing” checks but the memory is a bit much this early in the day.

Flash forward to the days of increasing automation and one of the least understood Congressional Acts of all time - Check 21 (the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-108publ100/pdf/PLAW-108publ100.pdf One of the biggest changes brought about by the new law was the ultimate elimination of physical checks actually being presented to the “drawee” bank for payment. Instead, images of deposited checks were presented to said bank. Changes in the industry had become fast and furious in the 90s and beyond while human interaction with things like checks became a relic of the past. Considering the basis for charging fees to customers for writing checks above the amounts in their accounts had been actual human effort, one might think that the cost for paying or rejecting debits would DECREASE. One would be wrong. Today, it is common for banks and their ilk to charge up to $35.00 if a debit overdraws an account OR is returned without being paid.

One of the new-fangled items I saw early in my banking career was the Automated Teller Machine. In the olden days we would have to extract, at least daily, all of the envelopes into which folks had theoretically placed a deposit (and DON’T ask me about Night Drop, I still get cold sweats over that). Over the years the servicing of ATMs became the province of third parties with the occasional intercession by actual bank employees. One of the banking concepts fully introduced to the consumers of America by ATMs was the notion of a “business day.” When banking involved a lot more human beings banks had to close their doors up to two hours before the end of the working day so that checks, cash and other debits and credits could be processed and the branch could be balanced. Between ATMs and in-office automation banks no longer have to do that HOWEVER they STILL DO. If you make a deposit via an ATM and that deposit is after the “cut-off” time it will not post to your account the day that you make it. In theory, if a debit to your account (check or electronic charge) is presented after hours it posts after the cut-off time. Logically then, if you make both a deposit and generate a debit to the SAME account at the same time (presuming the sufficiency of the deposit) AFTER hours, it shouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately for you IT VERY MUCH IS.

One of the banks with which I’ve had a MANY years of experience is Wells Fargo (full disclosure, I’ve successfully sued them twice AND filed many complaints against them). You know, the bank that uses a Stagecoach to handle your deposits and fiber optics to handle your debits. Last year I noticed a very odd sequence of events happen to the small account I decided to keep open for reasons such as writing about Wells. Debits were “posting” to my account BEFORE they had actually posted. While I won’t bore you with all of the ugly accounting work that happens, in theory automatically today, in the olden days when a debit would come in after hours and we PAID it, we’d create what was called by my employer a “Memo” debit. That debit would decrease your available balance BEFORE it actually posted. On the surface it’s not any sort of error as it’s only a Memo. Unfortunately for you Wells Fargo will post the pending debit for Fee Assessment purposes (I have actual physical evidence proving this) which means, even though the debit has not “officially” posted to your account, if there isn’t enough money in your account TODAY for a debit that will post TOMORROW then - CONGRATULATIONS, you lose! Wells WILL assess an overdraft or NSF fee for the PENDING debit (yes, even if there’s a pending credit). Now, one might ask, how can Wells do that OR WHY would Wells do that to which I’d reply - seriously? The actual answer is what I’ve referred to over the years as the Wells Fargo Magic Fee Generating Engine. When Wells was acquired by Norwest and its “fees uber alles” approach to banking, many things changed. Before the acquisition customer service was an actual thing at Wells but afterwards, “Damn the consumers, FULL FEES AHEAD!” Since then Wells has used multiple processes to attempt to generate fees for doing NOTHING. Maybe I’m old fashioned but the idea of a trillion dollar bank being paid by its customers despite doing NOTHING is entirely unacceptable. This latest process has not been fully exposed yet (this column is but my opening salvo) but, rest assured, it will be