the 13th...

[jay]

So far today scrapeth mightily... the meeting with CSC and the FAA folks led to them talking past each other... we will have to rein in CSC or possibly not exercise their contract option. The CSC lead guy figuratively walked over the FAA lead (the end customer!) in a discussion before lunch. And Pat and a friend got involved in a (probably avoidable) flamefest with each other. And neither of us looked at our checking account last night, it went negative by $100, and now we're facing $420 in wasted overdraft charges (14 small items, mostly point-of-sale... our bank (Wells Fargo) puts though all debits nightly in descending order, so as to generate the greatest amount of fees). So the cost of various toys, groceries, and airline tickets to Georgia just effectively went up. We've paid over $1K in overdraft charges this year alone, all coming from small overages... sigh.

Comments

[bdot.livejournal.com]

i am seriously considering leaving wells fargo and going to washington mutual soon!

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

So am I... I've been with Wells Fargo for 16 years, but it has gotten ridiculous. Citibank and BofA aren't appreciably better, but Washington Mutual is noticeably friendlier to non-millionaires, while still having online access and lots of locations.

[bdot.livejournal.com]

exactly!!!!

[joedecker.livejournal.com]

FYI, Washington Mutual also charges $30/overdraft check, at least according to the pages I've found.

Chris and I have found that having our own checking accounts
has entirely eliminated our overdrafts, because we could each keep track of what was in that account without lots of error-prone coordination. Don't know if that would help for y'all, but I thought I'd pass along the idea.

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

Washington Mutual also charges $30/overdraft check

I don't think so, at least for the regular accounts. (OTOH, what you may have found is for one of the other, higher service, accounts). I can't actually FIND anything, mind you. For some reason things are S L O W today, and I can't access stuff from August (when we had a couple of NSF charges due to my wallet having been stolen etc). But my recollection is that on the Free Checking account we have, the overdraft fees are about $20 each. Which of course is still significant if you have several all at once.

Separate accounts seems a good idea for folks who can't keep a "cushion" against overdrafts. And with WaMu, they can both be free accounts.

[joedecker.livejournal.com]

I don't think so, at least for the regular accounts.

Maybe not in California, my source is out of state. I had looked for something more local, and I spent some amount of time looking through the WM site myself for the answer, but this was all I could find.

[joedecker.livejournal.com]

At least in NY, the NSF fee appears to apply to even the "Platinum account." Bankrate.com lists WM at $21, which sounds more like what you were expecting, but lists Wells Fargo at $15.

Silly banks.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Ah. That's because WFB has a sliding scale -- the first two overdrafts are $15, then it goes up to $30 thereafter.

But my interest is more in how a bank processes checks and debits, rather than the NSF amount. It isn't $20 vs. $30, it's one overdraft vs. a dozen -- from the same shortfall amount, processed in different orders. Since WFB changed from ascending-order to descending-order processing, my overdraft fees have soared from $60-100/year to (this year) $1200. That's an expensive checking account...

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it is different from state to state. I agree that the info doesn't seem to be on the site. I tried to look at our back months, but couldn't get it to access those either. OTOH, their front page has stuff splashed all over it about system upgrades and various downtimes, so the slow site today is probably due to that. I haven't had trouble in the past. But the upshot is that I'm pretty sure it was about $20 for each NSF.

I don't know what order they post the drafts in, either. Is it standard policy to post them from largest to smallest? I would have thought that they'd post in the order received, but who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of bankers? ;^)

FWIW, we've been fairly pleased with WaMu, to whom we switched a couple of years ago after becoming increasingly dissatisfied with our Credit Union (CA State Empl. #9). And we HATED HATED HATED BofA.

[joedecker.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you're right about the fees. I've heard great things about WaMu, but to be honest, I've had good luck over the last
fifteen years with Wells, after some incidents with B of A that still leave a bad taste in my mouth. If I were in a mood to switch, I'd definitely look at WaMu, though.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Thanks! patgreene has no income herself, so that hadn't occurred to me. I'm not sure how we'd handle bill-paying responsibilities... for the past 20 years, neither of us has had our own accounts, everything has been pooled.

[joedecker.livejournal.com]

Yeah, dunno if there's a way to make that work, years back, Chris and I have had more disparate incomes and arranged sort of a "standard monnthly transfer" but it wasn't a budgetary limit, just a regular flow of money. But your situation might be quite different, hard to say.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

WaMu in my area (SoCal) has crappy customer service. It's not a significant improvement on WFB.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Sigh... thanks for the data point.