Hey Darkbeaver, I recalled all your screeds against the bankers of the world. You might like this proposal for the world of banking all over the globe.
- Do not read any further if you use only cash or you always have enough cushion in your checking account to never worry about overdraft fees.
- This article is for those of you who have had overdraft fees and use a debit card
- Imagine a banking system that allows people to withdraw more money than they have. Imagine banks allowing people to have a negative balance. Imagine 18 year olds who don’t understand how this can happen. Or for that matter imagine any age group that often gets surprised by this wonderful privilege of being able to overdraw.
- Imagine that the debit card you use is not always an immediate transaction. For example some gas stations will charge your account a dollar immediately and then 2 or 3 days later will get the rest of the money out of your account. People discover this delayed transaction the hard way. Thinking that they’ve already paid the gas station they wrongly assume their balance indicates what they have left after all their transactions. Wrong! All people on tight budgets discover this the hard way with an overdraft fee.
- Propose a law at point of sale. As soon as your debit card is swiped through the reader or scanned, why not have a prompt, “You are about to overdraw. Continue? Yes or No.”
- Imagine the countless hours of saved time for both banking employees answering irate customer inquiries and countless hours of times for those with tight budgets who must constantly monitor their account.
- Even the most responsible who watch their transactions and watch their check book can sometimes err because of one major problem: All our transactions by debit card are not immediate. We were used to no transactions being immediate in the past when we had a banking system that did not allow overdrafts.
- The major reality is that banks allow you to overdraft because these are the days of direct deposit and banks not only get their money back that way, but they also get to charge you a 25 dollar overdraft fee for the 3 dollar cheeseburger you shouldn’t have purchased. This is a huge revenue stream mostly done at the expense of the very young who don’t know any better, or of our young soldiers in the armed services who have little bank accounts, or by anyone with a tight budget or of anyone who does NOT have web access to their bank account. By the way having web site access allows you to monitor more efficiently any delayed or pending transactions.
- Imagine a system where the odds of any miscalculation favor the dealer, um, I mean the bank. And then stack the odds in their favor with the Big Bailout by both Presidents Bush and Obama.