Military Family
APO,#2Author of original report
Wed, October 03, 2012
I will definitely request the "declined the card if overdraft" part, is really good idea to keep expending just what we real have. We are trying to avoid any type of credit and/or paying overdraft fees. Simple life without complications. If you know that you don't have extra money to borrow then you will stuck with what you really have. Thank you again.
Military Family
APO,#3Author of original report
Wed, October 03, 2012
All was a missunderstanding and with have a final and current CORRECT balance during the day; called to Customer Service and they apologized for the inconvenience (we were never overdrafted at all). Good we micromanaged all our accounts and we can notice all the slighlest mistakes. During middle of the night they perform Online maintenence and the balances aren't current at the time (that is morning time for us). Downsize, we really need a current balance and we are looking forward to move to another bank, plus the limited hours of their customer service works is definitely a problem for us. Good luck with this Bank.
PD, checking all your bank accounts at the earliest time is pretty good to keep a close control of your finances. You don't feel tempted to spend more if you know what actually you have in your account (s).
Robert
Irvine,#4Consumer Comment
Wed, October 03, 2012
The title says it all...what does your written register say? Let me guess you don't keep one. Well that is not only your first mistake, but your biggest mistake.
You will not find a single bank(even your new bank) that will guarantee that their On-Line banking is going to reflect your exact balance at any given time. In fact if you talk to them directly and ask them they will tell you that you need to be using a written register to keep track of your account. On-Line banking was NEVER meant to replace this. It is used only as a confirmation to your written register as well as a good way to check for fraudulent usage.
Are you still asking what a Written Register is? Well it is fairly simple. It is basically a log where you write down every single transaction you make and deduct it from your balance. When your deposit gets posted you add that to your balance. Then as long as you never spend more than your register shows you can't overdraft. The reason behind this is simple. Only you know what you have written.
If you write a check it may be several days before it gets posted to your account. During this time your on-line banking will show you have more than you actually do because of the check you wrote. Now, you say you only use your debit card and those show up immediately all of the time...WRONG. Yes some may show up immediately, but depending on how the company processes the debit, it may be 2-3 days before it shows up on-line. This is especially true if you use your debit card on a weekend or holiday.
One other point, be sure that you do not opt-in to the Debit Card Overdraft protection, this is where if you attempt to use your debit card and you don't have enough available they would still approve it and charge you an overdraft fee. If you don't opt-in, the debit would be declined and you avoid the fee(of course you may suffer a little bit of embarrassment at the point of sale). But again..this is based on what the bank shows you have available. If you have outstanding checks or debits that have not been submitted you may still get hit with the fees even if you did opt-out.
There are several places to get a register for free. You can search for "Free Check Registers" on-line and find several. You can even go into a branch of your bank, I would bet that they would be more than happy to give you one.
Who knows if you will actually take this to heart or not, but if you don't I can just about guarantee you that you will have the same issues with your next bank..and the one after that..and the one after that.