this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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Well, you see, you've opted-in to a service where, to save you the embarrassment of not being able to pay for something, the bank charges you $35. I'm sure it's in the fine print somewhere. /s
TBH, though, my bank lets me opt-out of it. They also let me tie in my savings account, so if I would overdraw my checking account instead they move money from savings and send me a note.
opt-out is bs. all things should be opt in if they are not gratis.
I'm not gonna defend banks very often, but in fairness, it's opt-out because most people prefer a $35 fee to having a payment rejected. There's multiple reasons for that:
Now to put on my "but fuck banks" hat:
The REAL problem, IMO, is that the fee amounts to usury and should be regulated like any other debt. In most cases, your overdraft is equivalent to thousands of percent interest on the overdraft amount. Some "more honest" banks will limit your fee to the total amount overdrawn, making only 100% in fees (still over 36,000% effective APR if it's all reconciled the next day). A few banks have come up with "small overdraft forgiveness" where they'll just bloody not charge you a $35 fee over a dollar or two (like the guy in another thread has). But the DDA/overdraft market is so badly regulated, they can basically do whatever they want and then can collude to keep you from opening a bank account with another bank.
I don’t know if that’s really true anymore. It certainly used to be true that this was a service when the fees were rare and consequences serious but this is another case of enshittification where the fees became a profit center so banks changed policies to charge more of them
That I'm on board with. I worked IT at a company that processed overdraft debt and it was a breeze because the Banks have disgusting amounts of leverage against the poor customer.
But I also think this is a case of "we don't care about the poor people, even enough to come up with ideas to hurt them". They came up with this process that works well for middle-class and provides reliable profits, and they won't actually look into the fact that it fucks with poor people because they don't care. A few banks were giving my previous employer up 40% of their overdraft revenue to collection companies for years without a second thought. It's not a lot of money for them, but it's profits and they don't care to change what makes money. And for most lower-middle-class folks, a rare fee because a bill doesn't quite overlap with a paycheck is "better than being SOL"
as long as they don't charge a fee every time that 'overdraw protection' is triggered like some banks.
Oh, they don't charge me anything to cover my overdraft with my own money. It's kinda nice. edit: it's also a privilege that I have enough savings that this is practical for me.