Why bank such insade amount for Overdraft fee?

I agree, the fees are indeed insane. They claim its for processing, but the amts are ridiculous. Somewhere amidst the tiny, tiny-printed brochure that comes with your acct, is information re: fees for NSF, too many withdrawals, for having under a certain amt in the acct monthly, etc. Even free checking accts arent really free. Even the overdraft protection they offer fees you to death....$10.00 for each transaction...insanity at its best. No regular working stiff has the monthly balance in their acct that most banks require. The best financial institute to deal with is your local credit union. It really doesnt hurt to argue (nicely of course) with the bank to have fees removed when they occur.

PS Did you know that PNC Bank actually built our new PNC Park Stadium here in Pgh, PA (home of the Steelers) with the fees charged customers for NSF fees, etc = truth

Your fees should be disclosed in your paperwork when you opened your account. If you do not have that paperwork, they should be able to provide you with a pamphlet with the information of all the fees listed.

A few years ago banking was supposed to change dramatically with the introduction of Check 21. I'm sure you are familiar.... at some businesses you can write a check and the funds are automatically taken from your account at the time of purchase instead of there being a "float time" from where the business accepts the check and the funds are actually taken from your account a few days later. Because of Check 21, many financial institutes offer a form of overdraft protection (other than transferring funds from your savings to checking to cover what could have been an insufficient check) with a set limit, and with a fee involved (probably the same fee that you would have had with your NSF fee). The financial institute would then pay your check from your account, but charge you a "Courtesy Pay" fee. While this does put your account into the negative, you can rest assured that your check was paid. If your check had been insufficient, with no other means of overdraft, you would still have been charged an NSF fee AND you would have to pay what ever fees the business you wrote the check to (fees running from $20 to $75 and higher). You would also be saved the embarresment of having to go to the business to pick up your bad check.

If your finanacial institute does not offer this service you might want to look around and other financial options. From my experiance I have found credit unions easier to work with and less fees charged for anything under the sun.

Honey,
I sure that when you opened your account, you were given some literature to read. Because of the time limit, bankers can not go over every disclosure, but overdraft is discussed in the little pamphlet. Now. it sound like you are a Bank of America customer. What you need to do now is close your accounts and open an account with another bank and set up overdraft protection from a credit card of savings accounts. I got overdraft protection from a line of credit from u.s.bank. unlike other banks they don't charge for that service. I really like u.s. bank. Seriously, take a few minutes a day to read the disclosures booklet until you have read and understand the whole content. It will save you a lot of money and will also make you life easier. On line banking also helps in keeping track of you transactions; all transactions.

The main reason is easy money for them. Banks and other lending institutions get a larger portion of their income from fees now than ever before. Many times you can set up an automatic overdraft, so that it pulls from a savings account or credit card.

Because they can, they can charge whatever they want for overdraft fees.

It's a scam ... an easy way to rip people off. In the UK it's the same way ... slowly governments are regulating these scumbags. Once we have a Democratic President and a Democratically controlled Congress, we may see some headway against these unscrupulous scum.

actually all banks are required to disclose the overdraft fee, it's in the paperwork you signed to open your account.

BTW, what sort of crook are you that writes checks or uses a debit card for money you don't have?

Probably so you don't do it again too quick. It recently happened to me, and I know how much it hurts!