We've all gotten them. Those hateful letters in the mail informing of us that we've sinfully allowed our checking account to momentarily drop below $0 into the forbidden negative zone. Usually, by the time the letter has arrived in the mail, if we haven't caught the mistake ourselves, three or four MORE subsequent debits have hit the already-negative account, resulting in compounded fees, innocuously called NSF's, or non-sufficient funds fees.
I always thought the proper terminology was insufficient, but, what do I know?
Yes, one NSF fee after another can pile up, creating a huge mess of one's finances. By the time you get that nasty letter in the mail from your bank, if you haven't caught it by then, you can easily be looking at a $100 - $200 hole in your checking account, half of which are bank fees. You see, in addition to compounded NSF fees, banks will also love to add daily negative balance fees. If your account is negative for more than two days in a row, for example, they will tack on an additional $5 or $6 per DAY that your account is in arrears.
What to do?
Well, I've learned a few tricks.
Obviously, one can always switch banks. This can help some, but often is a futile shell game. Most banks have similar fees, similar rules, and similar games that they play. So, while switching is an option, it's likely not the best option.
There are, notably, some banks that will allow you to draw your account negative on any given business day, and you will not incur fees IF YOU MAKE A DEPOSIT sufficient enough to rectify the amount to anything over $0. Huntington Bank is one of those banks. If you know you have $60 in your checking at Huntington, you can use your debit at KMart for $100 and again at Target for $50, both on the same day, but you'd better somehow find some cash to make a quick deposit at Huntington before midnight, or pay the price in terms of fees.
Double check with Huntington in your area to see if this is still their policy, and what the exact rules are. I don't want to be held responsible for not keeping up with any banks' constantly changing game rules.
If you are an account holder at any other not-so-forgiving bank, and draw your account in to the dastardly sub-$0 range, you can call them up and beg and plead over the phone to do something about it. This, however, is most likely futile, unless you are a major mover and shaker with multiple accounts and multiple figures in each account. Few of us are.
And don't even bother threatening the bank phone rep with the often-tried "I'll take my business elsewhere..." The bank rep likely won't care one iota. Not one. You want to know why? Because even if you DO switch banks, a hundred customers from the bank you just switched TO are going to switch themselves to the one you just left. People switching banks is so commonplace that banks aren't going to shed too many tears to lose you.
Also, typically, the phone rep is going to say something like, "I completely understand, but it's completely out of my hands. The only one with the authority to reverse your NSF is the manager of the branch where you opened your account."
So what do you do? Call up the branch where you'd originally opened up your account? It is an option, of course, and, if you are like me and only get perhaps one NSF every other year or so, the bank manager is going to be able to see this on his or her monitor. They are going to see that you are fairly good about keeping your accounts in the positive, and will likely grant you one NSF reversal per 12-month period.
Banks actually LOVE account holders who rack up fees day in and day out. Fees make up an enormous segment of any banks' operating income. Don't believe me? Walk in to any bank and ask to see a fee disclosure. You'll likely be handed a sheet of paper with about 20 or 30 different things that the bank will do for you on your behalf... for a fee. Or, check a banks' website. Hidden somewhere on each banks' site is likely a fee structure page with all the pertinent fees that that bank will charge for any service under the sun. Some banks charge a fee to cash a check if you are not an account-holder at that specific bank. There's a fee at some banks to actually conduct a transaction with a living, breathing teller, if that specific transaction could have been done online, over the phone or at a kiosk.
Fees, fees, fees.
And don't even get me started on ATM fees. I'll touch on those in a bit.
What are your options for a NSF reversal, if you've gotten more than one per any 12-month period? About your only option is to call up the same bank manager again. This time, you may have to jump through a few hoops to get that fee reversed. The manager might suggest something like, "Well, I can reverse this fee this one time IF you open up a supplemental account and link it to your checking account. Then, the next time your primary checking account drops below $0, we will simply pull any additional funds from this supplemental account." Each bank has a different name for this back-up account. But, take heed, that even if you agree to do this, and even if this NSF is reversed, and in the future, if you need the bank to pull some funds from your back-up account to your primary, they will likely charge a fee to do that, as well. It won't be as much as a NSF fee, but it'll be a fee nonetheless.
One of my favorite tricks is one I learned years ago. I've always been good with handling my own money, and with the advent of the internet, watching my accounts has been easier. Add to that the text messages and emails some banks will now send you if your account drops below $50, for example, or any other amount that you designate, keeping track of account funds isn't really all that difficult.
But, back to my favorite trick. All bank branches will have some manager on duty at all times. Most banks are 9 - 5 or 9 - 6. Their hours are always on the door to the bank, as well as on their websites. In the past, when I was younger and could sometimes accrue two or three NSF's annually, my favorite trick was to call up the bank at five minutes til closing. Any bank will take calls up until closing, and not a second afterwards. So, I'd call at five til. Or three til. Or exactly at closing. If I missed the closing time by a few seconds, I'd simply call again the following day a few minutes earlier.
No bank manager is going to want to take a call at three minutes until closing. But, they must. They have no way of knowing if it's some big-wig account holder on the other end, or a branch supervisor or whatever. So, take the call they must. My favorite trick was to keep them on the phone as long as I could. Sometimes until five past closing. Sometimes 10 past. One I managed to keep on the phone until 13 past. The longer you keep them on the phone, the greater your chances of getting a NSF- or any fee, for that matter- reversed. Probably reversed with a stern warning, accompanied with, "OK, I'll do it this one time as a customer courtesy....."
Voila! That's all I needed to hear.
I am in no way suggesting to be arrogant on the phone, disruptive, condescending, rude, hateful, mean or bullying. You were, after all, the one who made the mistake, most likely. The banks' computers are rarely wrong in such cases.
Likewise, I am also not suggesting to be lazy, lackadaisical or totally irresponsible with your money and accounts. You are supposed to be the one watching over your accounts.
What I am saying is that let the banks charge the fees to the ones who truly are irresponsible with their accounts. To those of us who really do make conscious attempts to manage our money and accounts, I am directing my little callling-the-manager-at-five-minutes-til-closing maneuver.
Now a few words about ATM fees. These, too have gotten quite out of hand. But, there are some things you can do, in some cases.
I have happened to be in need of some green on a few occasions myself, and found myself driving off to the nearest ATM associated with my bank. I don't think any bank assess ATM fees to its own customers if they use the banks' own ATMs, but I could be wrong.
Well, on a couple of occasions, the ATM I had pulled up to in the ATM lane was having issues. Maybe it was out of money. Maybe it was on the blink. Doesn't matter. I still didn't have ready access to the funds I needed at that particular time. So, I headed to the next ATM a few blocks down the street, at a different bank than my own.
Naturally, I was assessed fees for using another banks' ATM. Few people would use another banks' ATM when one of their own was just a couple blocks away. The next day, I called up my banks' customer service and explained the situation. They were more than happy to reverse all the fees I had paid for that single ATM transaction. They pretty much had to. Their own ATM wasn't functional, and they most certainly had some sort of record of that. And while I could have driven six miles out of my way to the next ATM associated with my bank, I certainly wasn't about to waste my time, money or gas on a bank ATM failure.
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