81–90 of 223 posts
Well, Wells Fargo charges $35.00 overdraft fee. Or if you choose to decline, they charge $35.00 for unaccepted charge. Either ways you'll be paying Wells. Oh well.
The pain overdraft fees cause poor people is truly hard to comprehend unless you've been there. It's incredibly evil. You've got $16 left for food and then then the Flickr account you forgot to cancel gets charged to your account, putting your balance at -$9. Now you have to pay $35/day until you get enough money to cover the overdraft fees. You end up paying $100+ for a $9 forced loan. The bank could have just decli…
Wells Fargo will charge you $35 even if they decline the charge. So they don't pay because you don't have enough money, and on top of that they charge you for not paying.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a couple of times in my life when I was quite poor (for someone living in a G8 country...) The biggest thing I learned was to use cash. Cash is awesome because you can see how much you have and you can't spend more than you have. Even now that I am relatively well off, I have my habitual routine of getting cash at the beginning of the week and spending only that for the week. In fact, I make sure that there…
> The last time I tried to rent a room at a hotel in Canada, they would not accept cash -- credit card only. This has more to do with the hotel's liability. If you steal from the hotel or damage the room, they will apply those extra charges to your credit card. Even if your credit can't cover the costs, your verified credit card information tells them that you didn't provide a false name, and they have someone to cha…
My understanding is that the reason hotels want a credit card is that they pre-charge it with a deposit and then refund it when they check the room. You never see the pre-charge transactions so you don't know about it.
I have successfully negotiated with some hotels to take cash by offering them a cash deposit. Some hotels refuse to do it, though. I don't even have a credit card any more (mostly out of choice, but also because Japanese banks tend not to give credit cards to non-permanent residents), so the next time I travel in the west (soon) is going to be an adventure...
The pain overdraft fees cause poor people is truly hard to comprehend unless you've been there. It's incredibly evil. You've got $16 left for food and then then the Flickr account you forgot to cancel gets charged to your account, putting your balance at -$9. Now you have to pay $35/day until you get enough money to cover the overdraft fees. You end up paying $100+ for a $9 forced loan. The bank could have just decli…
> They know exactly what they're doing. They're rich bankers robbing poor people. I can understand thinking that the "correct" thing to do here is to simply not allow a transaction when there aren't sufficient funds, but this language goes overboard. It's not robbing a person because they were unable to keep track of how much money they own and adjust accordingly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish USAA would open their net a little bit to extended families. My brother is a doctor in the US Navy, but that supposedly wasn't 'close' enough of a family relation for me to qualify to do business with them.
Why do you think it should be?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the best part is, you're being downvoted for this.. I dunno, apparently a lot of HN thinks that it's impossible to believe that banks are generally run by bastards while simultaneously believing that 99% of these instances are completely voluntary and completely avoidable? If you keep track of what you're spending your money on, it's not a problem you're gonna have to ever deal with - and I say this as someone th…
Sure. For well-educated, silicon valley types with a resident accountant. You're missing out on the part that says that the poor (which many times goes with lack of basic education) are hit the most by these fees. Not to mention that overdraft fees are a ridiculous concept to begin with.
Every checking account you can walk into a bank and get provides you with a paper register...
We could read 100 sob stories, or we could recognize that every single overdraft (other than errors and fraud, which do happen but are rare and these days invariably corrected) is voluntary . Yes, banks will make money any way that they can. Yes, they will happily take your last dollar, or even dollars you don't have and never will. No, they do not give one flying fucking rat's ass about you, your sister, or the home…
And the best part is, you're being downvoted for this.. I dunno, apparently a lot of HN thinks that it's impossible to believe that banks are generally run by bastards while simultaneously believing that 99% of these instances are completely voluntary and completely avoidable? If you keep track of what you're spending your money on, it's not a problem you're gonna have to ever deal with - and I say this as someone th…
People are all connected and all economic relations are social relations. If you treat everyone without their social context, you're basically saying that every powerful individual or institution can make relations with them a minefield because all that matters is that it's their weaker counterparty's responsibility to avoid all the mines. After all, everyone 'consents' to a 'voluntary' exchange. How could 'voluntary' exchanges be bad???
Your worldview is just a very immature way to rationalize predatory institutions and hostile power structures. Actions cannot be judged as voluntary except in context. The context that people like you and the grandparent tend to take is, at best, one of the law or some insipid moral principles based off of a rancid individualism.
The pain overdraft fees cause poor people is truly hard to comprehend unless you've been there. It's incredibly evil. You've got $16 left for food and then then the Flickr account you forgot to cancel gets charged to your account, putting your balance at -$9. Now you have to pay $35/day until you get enough money to cover the overdraft fees. You end up paying $100+ for a $9 forced loan. The bank could have just decli…
There are a couple of times in my life when I was quite poor (for someone living in a G8 country...) The biggest thing I learned was to use cash. Cash is awesome because you can see how much you have and you can't spend more than you have. Even now that I am relatively well off, I have my habitual routine of getting cash at the beginning of the week and spending only that for the week. In fact, I make sure that there…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Large banks will do things like structure charges so as to extract the maximum amount of overdraft charges. For example: You have $40 in your account. You spend $20, then $12, then $5, then $120. One would logically conclude that at the end of the day, the bank will resolve these *in order* and you will have a single overdraft fee. Large banks *cough* Bank of America *cough* will explicitly structure those charges to…
> Do you not see anything morally and ethically wrong with this? That's not the language the person I was responding to used.