Aug. 2, 2009: Bank fees and a tale of timing

Originally appeared on The Opinion Shop blog of The News & Observer:

Reading the Work & Money story today about bank overdraft fees revved up my ire all over again regarding a recent bump in my banking road. Let this be a warning about how the timing of transactions can get you into trouble, too -- and about how no struggling (which one isn't struggling?) company you employ these days is letting grass grow under your payments, lemme tell you.

I recently had siding put on my house, a home-improvement extravaganza that required writing three checks at various times over a week to the siding company. The second check was not one we were expecting, having been told there was a before and an after payment, but my husband wrote it out when the company's owner asked for it and then headed to the bank to make a deposit to cover it.

Idling in the bank's drive-thru, my husband glanced over, and lo and behold, there was the siding company owner in another line, apparently depositing the check my husband had written about seven minutes earlier. Because it was after 2 p.m., we didn't worry about it, thinking the deposit and the withdrawal would be made the next day.

Um, no. Naturally, the bank took the money out of our account that day and didn't make our deposit until the next day, despite the fact that both transactions were made at nearly the same moment.

So we got "overdrawn."

I've decided that the $2.73 I'm having to pay in interest on the line of credit that the bank so graciously extended to me is not worth fighting about and certainly not worth the 17 minutes that navigating the telephone customer service jungle would cost me.

But when customers who can ill afford it get charged $30 in fees for overspending on a $3 item in the sort of environment we're living in (did you hear the one about 4,800 bank officials getting at least $1 million each in bonuses?), some new rules might be in order.