AboutJim Meadows Expertise I can respond to most questions concerning consumer and business relationships with US financial institutions. My expertise touches on deposit and loan issues and particularly on strategies to navigate through bank policies personell and practices. I have a degree in Economics, attended law school, Graduate Shool of Banking, and Commercial Lending and Compliance Schools.
Experience I have twenty years experience as a bank CEO. Most of those years were spent operating a bank focused primarly on serving consumer/retail needs. I helped pioneer deposit and loan products for low/moderate income individuals. I currently serve on multiple bank boards and am Chairman of a Commercial Bank in Atlanta.
Question I had $46.00 in the bank, and some pending debit card items, these were all small debit charges and were completely covered by the $46.oo I had in my account. On the same date an ACH for $52 came in I had forgotten about. So the bank paid the $52.00 item, then paid the rest of the pending items (all on same date) and charged me NSF fees for every single one of them, totaling $175.00. If they had paid the small items that were pending first, then paid the larger $52.00 item, I would have only incurred one NSF fee. The way the bank did it was seemingly to create more income for themselves. This is a rotten trick. Do I have any recourse? I thought there was a law passed that made banks pay all the small items first to incur the least amount of NSF fees? What do you know about this? I live in Florida. I've already talked to 2 Customer Service reps., they were of no help at all.
Thanks
Answer Ev,Yes, this practice does seem rotten. Unfortunately the bank is covered in the fine print in your account contract. You have no legal recourse.
The official line for most banks is that by paying the largest item first, they are potentially paying the payment most important to the consumer, ie house payment, rent, car payment , etc.
If you have a good history with the bank and have had an account there for some time you might have some success with at least a partial refund by writing a polite request to a member of the bank's management. I am not aware of the law you mentioned.Jim
