1.12.2009

Please explain this to me...


Ok, there is a husband and a wife. The husband is at the mall and he walks by Zales and they have a diamond ring with diamond earings that were normally $2,000 marked down to $500. The husband decides he HAS to get this for his wifes birthday that is this next week...so he runs to the bank and withdrawls the $500 dollars cash from their checking account. He goes straight back to the mall and the necklace and earrings are gone. So sad. So, he goes right back over to the back and deposits the money right back into the account. This all took place within a matter of hours.
So, a few days goes by and the wife gets online to check her account and she notices that they have about 7 0r 8 overdraft fees. She asks her husband about it and he confesses to the ruined present...but...he assured her he re-deposited the money the second he realized he wasn't going to be able to get the earrings. They look at their account more closely and notice they they didn't credit the account with the deposit until 3 or 4 days AFTER he deposited the money...so meanwhile, the checks and other things were going through and all getting overdraft fees...$38 dollars per overdraft...
I think this is completely unfair and that if the back can instantly take funds out of your checking, they should be able to instantly put it back in. Does anyone out there have a good reason as to why that can't happen?
This same thing happened to my roomate...sort of. She had been planning on buying a mac laptop and her dad sent her a check to put into her account to help her get it...she deposited the check into the account...and asked the bank employees if that money was available right now. They said it was. She even asked if it was available to use in one large sum...or if it had to be in smaller incriments. They said it was all available right now. So, we drove on over to the apple store...and...as you can guess...her card was denied due to insufficient funds.
Lame if you ask me.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is lame and makes no sense! However, I am afraid it is just one of those annoying facts of life that you can't do anything about. Just be aware that banks do this kind of thing all the time, so you can't write checks (or use your debit card) thinking, I can deposit my check before it goes through...wrong!

Katy Wilson said...

Note: this story is not a secret story about me. It happened to the lady in my office. Also, she has been on the phone with them and it looks like getting those charges removed isn't going to happen. Stupid. Also, the lady and her husband didn't write any checks while the money wasn't in their account. The money was out and back in before any other checks or debit card purchases were made.

Kevin said...

Yeah, banks are dumb.

Wilkerson Family said...

that is lame... :(

Anonymous said...

Dear Katy -- Your blog is my favorite, it's always the first one I check when I'm blog stalking.

Also -- tell your friend to shop around for a new bank, some banks do better than others with stupid administrative things like that, and there's no need to stay put if the bank she has is being stupid with her money.

WOOT!

Unknown said...

I think it all depends on the bank but it seems to happen a lot more with bigger banks.

tacy said...

I was waiting for a punchline the whole time. I thought you were telling a joke.

Anonymous said...

They did that to me and I went into the bank and made a scene until they refunded the overdraft charges. Then I went back a week later and closed out my account with them. That sure showed them.