28 Mar 2006
Man Is Charged $4,300 for Four Burgers

You know, this might belong under the 'Humor' category, except that I'm certain it's not funny when it happens to you. Certain, as last December I purchased a $32.58 burger myself, and while the circumstances were different, the end result was similar.

My bank, which shall remain nameless here, had put a new feature on my account called "Overdraft Protection". This was not a loan feature to prevent overdrafts, oh no, this was simply a promise by the bank to pay any overdraft up to a total of $500, while still charging the $29 overdraft fee per incident.

When we got new plates for the truck, the license branch didn't give us a receipt, as the registration had the amount and authorization number for the check card printed on it, it was to serve in that capacity as well. But registrations usually stay in the vehicle, and consequently this charge did not get entered in the register. I keep a small reserve in the account in case of accounting errors, but this amount was large enough that it overdrew our account by about $27.

The bank caught this immediately, but rather than send out an email notice, they printed and sent it snail mail - on a Friday afternoon. I was blissfully unaware of the impending disaster.

Every charge I made over the weekend cost me the amount of the charge itself plus $29 - hence the $32.58 burger. The bank knew I was overdrawn, and yet processed the charge anyway, taking on the overdraft fee. Of course, they couldn't tell the clerks at the various stores to let me know my account was overdrawn - that would've been a "privacy violation". So they kept racking up the bills until my card was finally declined - 15 charges totaling $65 had added an additional $435 in "bad check charges" to my account.

I was livid. To say the least. To the banks credit, they removed all but one bad check charge, and they also removed the new "feature" from my account. But this was a rather obvious attempt at swelling their own coffers at my expense, and I wonder if I'd not threatened a lawsuit (credibly so, and the branch manager knew this) if I'd have gotten my money back.

Of course, I began checking out all of the other banks in the community to move my account - every single one of them put a similar "feature" on every new account by default, to be removed only at customer request. So my account stayed put, on the premise that the devil you know is better than the one you don't.

I believe they used to call this "theft". Nowadays they call it a business plan.

AP - Four burgers at his neighborhood Burger King cost George Beane a whopping $4,334.33.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

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