Bank of America BAD news page

The Tarp fund made this banster one of the most corrupt banksters in the country.

BofA Moves Against Judge For Refusing To Boot Ailing Elderly Couple Onto Street Following Foreclosure Of Dilapidated Bungalow Over Unpaid $7K HELOC
In Grand Rapids, Michigan, The Michigan Messenger reports:

* Bank of America is suing a Grand Rapids District Judge Michael Christensen for allowing an ailing, elderly couple to remain in their foreclosed home until the couple can move, the Grand Rapids Press is reporting. The couple purchased the house in 1976, for $12,000 and had paid it off. However they took out a line of credit, and ended up defaulting on nearly $7,000 of that credit line. In Nov. the judge ruled they had to go, but in April he set aside that ruling, giving the couple another three months.(1)

For more, see Bank suing Grand Rapids judge for allowing elderly, ailing couple to remain in foreclosed home.

For The Grand Rapids Press story, see Grand Rapids judge tells bank to let ailing couple stay in foreclosed home until they are able to move.

(1) For story updates, see The Grand Rapids Press:

* Foreclosure eviction for Grand Rapids couple takes new twist — lender claims they defaulted on first mortgage with balance of $41,000,
* Elderly Grand Rapids couple brokers foreclosure deal with bank, given 7 weeks to move.

posted by Home Equity Theft Reporter at 2:15 PM links to this post

Bank of America tumbles on nationalization worries

* Wednesday February 4, 2009, 5:31 pm EST

* Bank of America Corporation
* , Citigroup, Inc.

By Elinor Comlay

Reuters – A Bank of America sign is seen in the Northern Virginia town of Leesburg, January 18, 2009. REUTERS/Larry

Reuters – A Bank of America sign is seen in the Northern Virginia town of Leesburg, January 18, 2009. REUTERS/Larry …
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NEW YORK (Reuters)

Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC – News) shares fell below $5 for the first time since 1990 on speculation that spiraling losses at newly acquired Merrill Lynch & Co might lead to government control of the largest U.S. bank, wiping out shareholders.

Shares fell more than 11 percent, marking the fifth straight decline, as rumors persisted that mounting losses on mortgages and corporate loans might lead to the nationalization of the Charlotte, North Carolina, lender, or even the ouster of Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis. Bank of America and Merrill Lynch ended 2008 with $2.49 trillion of assets.

“Until we get some clarity that even the largest banks will remain in shareholder hands, this downward spiral is just going to continue,” said Nancy Bush, an analyst with NAB Research.

A spokesman for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and a spokesman for Bank of America declined comment.

Bank of America shares fell 60 cents to $4.70 and slipped as low as $4.62 during trading. The cost of protecting the bank’s debt against default with credit default swaps rose 0.3 of a percentage point.

But according to the Charlotte Observer, Lewis in a memo to employees said the bank’s board “unanimously” supported Bank of America’s business model last week in “the longest board meeting in anyone’s memory.”

Lewis has come under fire from shareholders as the once-lauded Merrill Lynch acquisition has unraveled, leaving Bank of America dependent on government support to battle mounting losses and evaporating shareholder value.

“Part of what’s going on with the stock price is reflecting the uncertainty of Lewis’ position,” said Michael Nix, portfolio manager at Greenwood Capital Associates.

Nix discounted the board’s support of Lewis, noting he would not expect the board to be other than supportive and that board support has proved fleeting for bank chief executives in the recent past.

A FIASCO

Bank of America last month posted its first quarterly loss in 17 years, and said Merrill’s $15.31 billion quarterly loss was so much worse than expected that Lewis needed help from the government to complete the acquisition.

The government, which had already given Bank of America $25 billion in October under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), agreed to inject $20 billion more, and to share in losses on $118 billion of residential and commercial mortgages, derivatives and corporate debt.

“This Merrill Lynch deal has become a fiasco for Ken Lewis,” said Ralph Cole, portfolio manager at Ferguson Wellman Capital Management in Portland, Oregon. “His whole reason for grabbing Merrill Lynch was getting the brokers, and what he ended up with was gigantic writedowns from the part of the business he didn’t even want.”

Lewis had coveted Merrill for its brokerage force, often known as the “thundering herd,” which he called the “crown jewel” of the roughly $19.4 billion takeover.

Bank of America shares have fallen 67 percent this year, compared to a 41 percent decline in the broader KBW Banks Index (Philadelphia:^BKX – News).

Shares in Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C – News), which has also received a large cash injection and a government guarantee of assets, were up as much as 10 percent at $3.82 before falling back to close at $3.49 — a gain of 0.9 percent, or 3 cents.

(Reporting by Elinor Comlay; Additional reporting by Dan Wilchins; Editing by Brian Moss, Gary Hill)

P

Please join me at my podcast, go to

www.mariokenny.podcast.com

I have a story to tell about my bad experiences with Bank of America it is in the works, meantime and for starters I am posting rants I find on the net, just to soften up the jam.

I welcome anyone who has a story to tell about their Bank of America gripes to post it here. I will re post them on this special page.

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Bank of America Board Under Gun From Critics

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By LOUISE STORY and JULIE CRESWELL

Published: January 27, 2009

Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the former chief of the Public Broadcasting System and the publisher of a Spanish newspaper would seem to have nothing in common — except for one thing. They all sit on the board of Bank of America.

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But as they and 13 of their colleagues meet Wednesday to discuss how to steer the bank through its troubled merger with Merrill Lynch, they are likely to be united by something else: a reluctance to undermine the bank’s embattled chief executive, Kenneth D. Lewis.

Less than a week after Mr. Lewis dismissed John A. Thain, the former chief of Merrill Lynch, contending he failed to reveal billions in bonus payouts and losses that led to a second round of taxpayer support for the bank, shareholders have turned up the pressure on Mr. Lewis to explain why he did not publicize the figures once he learned of them.

Their scrutiny has also turned an unusual spotlight on the oversight role played by the board members, many of whom were picked by Mr. Lewis from several companies that the bank, based in Charlotte, N.C., absorbed as he molded it into a sprawling financial giant.

“This board, historically, has been viewed as a board that was there on paper,” said Charles M. Elson, a corporate governance expert at the University of Delaware, who owns shares in Bank of America and voted against the Merrill merger. “But the question has been how active they have been in overseeing the C.E.O.?”

Bank of America’s board is an eclectic group, and it will grow larger this week when it adds three members from the board of Merrill. The bank’s two most powerful directors, O. Temple Sloan Jr. and Meredith R. Spangler, are close to Mr. Lewis’s predecessor, Hugh L. McColl Jr., who began building the company into the banking giant that it is today. Mr. McColl, still an influential pillar at the bank, has said in recent days that he supports Mr. Lewis. But if he changed his mind, Mr. Sloan and Mrs. Spangler would likely follow his lead, according to people with knowledge of the board’s thinking.

Four of the current members were around a decade ago when the bank took its current name after acquiring a California rival. Another handful joined in 2004, when Bank of America acquired FleetBoston. Another was an executive at MBNA, the credit card company the bank acquired, aiming to build the bank into a credit card powerhouse.

Aside from Mr. Lewis, only two people on the board — the former chief of FleetBoston and a former senior executive of MBNA — have roots in banking. While Wall Street is rife with tales of bank and brokerage directors who deferred to executives seeking faster growth through ever-riskier business, Bank of America’s shareholder advocates have grown increasingly concerned about the board’s ability to understand financial risks and rein in managers.

Until recently, Mr. Lewis was hailed as one of the saviors of Wall Street. He bought the troubled mortgage lender Countrywide and agreed to buy Merrill at the height of the financial crisis with no federal support. But by the time the merger closed, Merrill’s losses were larger than expected. The government soon handed Bank of America another multibillion-dollar cash infusion.

Initially, investors criticized Mr. Lewis for overpaying for the brokerage firm. Now, however, other questions have been raised. The office of the attorney general of New York said Tuesday it was investigating $4 billion in bonus payments made by Merrill to its employees before the deal closed. It is also examining what Bank of America’s chief administrative officer, J. Steele Alphin, and Mr. Thain knew about the payments.

Also Tuesday, the Service Employees International Union, one of the nation’s largest service sector unions, started a “fire Ken Lewis” campaign and called on the bank to replace him, claiming he had turned “a blind eye” to the bonuses doled out by Merrill.

While critics charge that Bank of America’s board has been little more than a rubber stamp in the empire-building campaign of Mr. Lewis, others describe it as independent and willing to push back against the chief executive.

“I don’t think the board would be intimidated by Ken and I don’t think he would take the board anyplace where it was uncomfortable,” said Paul Fulton, a former Bank of America director.

Members of the board, many of whom are paid upward of $200,000 a year for their service, declined to comment or did not return calls. A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment.

Its members are expected to vote Wednesday on the addition of three directors from Merrill Lynch: Charles O. Rossotti, who was the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service in the 1990s; Joseph W. Prueher, also a retired Navy admiral and former ambassador to China; and Virgis W. Colbert, a former executive at Miller Brewing, according to two people briefed on the agenda.

Their approval would raise the number of board members to 20, and would tighten the web that already binds many of the board’s current representatives. Mr. Prueher, for example, met Mr. Franks in the 1990s, when he was commander in chief of the United States Pacific and Mr. Franks was a division commander in Korea. And Mr. Colbert is a member of Augusta National, the Georgia-based golf club, where Mr. McColl, the bank’s former chief, is also a member.

Bob Morgan, the president of the Charlotte, N.C., Chamber of Commerce, said the board had a diverse makeup. Among its members are Monica Lozano, who publishes La Opinión, a Los Angeles daily, and Patricia E. Mitchell, the former PBS chief. “The perception that Bank of America’s board is provincial and insular does not hold up when you look at the composition,” he said.

Yet some board members are connected in other ways that reveal strong cross-pollinations with other company boards. For example, two of Bank of America’s directors serve as trustees at NStar, a utility company in Massachusetts that is headed by yet another Bank of America board member, Thomas J. May. And the Lowe’s Companies, the home improvement retailer, counts one of Bank of America’s directors as its former chief executive, and another as a current member of the Lowe’s board.

Bank of America’s two most influential members hail from North Carolina. The board’s independent lead director, Mr. Sloan, the founder of an auto parts company, lives in Raleigh. Mrs. Spangler is married to a well-known local businessman, C. D. Spangler, a former president of the University of North Carolina who once shared an apartment in the city with Mr. McColl, the former leader of the bank.

Like Mr. Lewis, the Spanglers live in the Charlotte area. They are large donors in Charlotte and to the Harvard Business School, have been shareholders in the bank since the early 1980s, when they sold a local bank to the predecessor of Bank of America. But in the last year they have lost more than $1 billion on their Bank of America holdings.

“If institutional investors choose to re-elect the board, then they should stop blaming the bank,” said Orin Kramer, a hedge fund manager and chairman of the New Jersey pension fund. “They should look in the mirror.”

Eric Dash contributed reporting.

This is the last straw. In July of 2006 I called BOFA and explained to them that a charge on my account should be reversed due to no services rendered by a so called mediation company who did not want to refund my $400.00 charge. I explained BOFA that I was willing to pay something but not the entire 400.00 because in all reality I never received any services from the.

BOFA credited my account back the $400.00 and explained to me that I will be receiving a letter from them within a few days and I need to have it filled out and send it back to them right away.

As always, two weeks later and I still did not receive the letter and I decided to call BOFA and asking for the letter. They claimed they sent it to me but they will send another one right away.

I did receive the second letter, had it filled out, typed a personal statement and even made photocopies of the letter because I knew somewhere down the line they were going to screw up again. Sure enough, on August 21st my account shows a $400.00 credit take back by BOFA. I called them and asked them to explain why it was taken out being that I followed everything they have asked me to do and I even explained to them that I have a copy with me and I will fax it to them as proof that I sent it out.

To make a long story short, they will not credit the back to me, in the meanwhile I have 5 ($35.00) overdraft charges and I am overdrawn $530.00+ and all they have to say that they will investigate the matter but I will have to wait 7 to 10 days or even longer.

Today I canceled both of my direct deposits and will call them one more time to see if they are willing to help me out. I should have learned my lesson back in 1988 while I was station in Fort Ord, CA. Two times they took my entire federal pay out of my account and started to charge me for overdraft charges when in fact they were the ones who screwed up.

I would love to see a huge class action suit against them.

They are liars and cheats and they do not care for their customers. I have had my account for over two years and every singly deposit I have ever made has taken 7 to 10 days to clear not matter what type of check it was.

Their excuse is that it is out of state, it has to go through the corporate office or my account has too many bounced chaeks. Always a dam excuse.

STAY AWAY FROM THEM.

I have more reviews at my site avilesfam.com/badbusiness

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U.S., European Bank Stocks Rise on ’Bad Bank’ Plan (Update2)

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By Andrew MacAskill and Jon Menon

Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) — U.S. and European bank stocks rose on speculation the Obama administration’s plan to absorb toxic assets will stabilize lenders’ balance sheets. Wells Fargo & Co. soared 31 percent after saying it doesn’t need more federal aid.

Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp., which had both lost about half their value this year before today, gained 19 percent and 14 percent, respectively. Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank AG climbed 23 percent and London’s Lloyds Banking Group Plc surged 50 percent.

Bank shares have slumped this month on speculation companies would write down more assets and need new capital injections, raising concern government intervention would wipe out any remaining shareholder value. The Obama administration’s plan may instead set up a so-called bad bank to absorb the hard-to-value holdings that have prevented many lenders from making new loans.

“The fact that they laid out a good bank/bad bank scenario means the nationalization of Citibank and Bank of America that people are worried about is less of a possibility,” said Warren Koontz, head of large-cap value stocks at Loomis Sayles & Co. in Boston. “The rolling fear that started with Citigroup and spread to Bank of America seems to have stopped for now.”

The KBW Bank Index of 24 U.S. banking companies climbed 14 percent, trimming this year’s decline to 26 percent.

Dividend Relief

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, which also said today it would leave its dividend unchanged, gained $5 to $21.19. New York-based Citigroup and Bank of America, with its headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, both lowered their quarterly payouts to shareholders to 1 cent a share earlier this month.

While competitors reduced their lending in the quarter, Wells Fargo added $50 billion in mortgage originations and has $22 billion in new loan commitments, the company said today in announcing a fourth-quarter loss of $2.55 billion. Excluding one- time items, the profit of 41 cents a share beat the average estimate of 33 cents among analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Citigroup rose 66 cents to $4.21 at 4:20 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, while Bank of America advanced 89 cents to $7.39. Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest securities firm until it converted to a bank last year, gained 18 percent to $23, the highest price since October.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. may manage the Obama administration’s proposal for a “bad bank,” buying distressed assets that are clogging balance sheets, two people familiar with the situation said.

Bank Catalyst

“A catalyst for banks everywhere is the expected announcement out of the U.S.,” said Simon Willis of NCB Stockbrokers Ltd in London. “We are seeing a rebound after a sharp selloff in banks last week.”

European stocks were helped by a newsletter that said Deutsche Bank had a “sensational” start to 2009. Germany’s biggest lender may earn almost 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) in pretax profit in January, Der Platow Brief reported today. The shares rose to 21.94 euros in Frankfurt.

Lloyds gained the most in at least two decades to 100.9 pence after Citigroup analysts led by Tom Rayner in London raised it to “buy” from “hold.” The possibility of nationalization “is more than adequately discounted in the current valuation,” Rayner said in a note today.

Lloyds Banking, formed by Lloyds TSB Group Plc’s takeover of HBOS Plc this month, is seeking to avoid an increase in the government’s 43 percent stake. Lloyds’ shares have declined 20 percent this year.

‘Dramatically Undervalued’

“The immediate worry of nationalization and recapitalization is slowing beginning to ebb away,” said Michael Trippitt, a London-based analyst at Oriel Securities Ltd. who has a “buy” rating on Lloyds. “Lloyds has been dramatically undervalued for some time,” and the revenue benefits and cost savings from the HBOS deal are “still understated,” he said.

Barclays Plc has more than doubled this week, and climbed to 107 pence in London today. The company lost almost half its value last week as investors speculated that the London-based company would need to raise money from the U.K. government or be nationalized. Barclays said Jan. 26 that it has 17 billion pounds of surplus capital and can use profit to offset about 8 billion of writedowns in 2008.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jon Menon in London at jmenon1@bloomberg.net; Andrew MacAskill in London at amacaskill@bloomberg.net.

I know there is a class action on this bank for things they have done to many consumers including me,the greed of the people we have put in charge of our money has plundered our lives to tatters,what strikes me the most is the general on look of the very employees of the bank,they generally hold a feeling that since they are the only Pepsi Cola in the desert in most big cities they have the right to mooch money using the bully strategy,clad with kindness.

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Check from a scammer bounces victim into jail

David Lazarus

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

San Francisco resident Matthew Shinnick tried to sell a pair of mountain bikes on Craigslist late last year. He attracted a buyer, received a check in the mail — and ended up handcuffed by police in a downtown Bank of America branch and jailed for almost 12 hours.

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BofA calls the bizarre episode “an unfortunate series of events” and says that “clearly and without equivocation, Bank of America regrets what occurred.” But the bank says it was only doing its duty by notifying the cops when a bad check surfaced.

It also says Shinnick has no grounds to sue for thousands of dollars in legal costs because of a 2004 state Supreme Court decision that shields institutions and people from liability when reporting suspected crimes to the police.

Legal experts say that BofA is right about Shinnick’s lack of recourse and that incidents like this, while unusual, could happen with greater frequency as Craigslist, eBay and other online services increasingly become hunting grounds for fraudsters and identity thieves.

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark acknowledged that cases of wrongful arrest are “an increasing possibility” and said the onus is on institutions like BofA “to show a greater commitment to customer service.”

Shinnick, 38, told me he’d received an e-mail in December from someone who said he was in Canada and was willing to pay a total of $600 for the two bikes offered on Craigslist.

“We never talked in person,” Shinnick said. “We just corresponded by e-mail over a series of weeks.”

The buyer finally said he was going to cut a check on his company’s Bank of America business account and arrange to have the bikes shipped north. Shinnick said he received a check for $2,000 shortly after Christmas and was informed that the extra cash was to cover shipping costs “and for my trouble.”

Shinnick, it appears, was a victim of the classic “Nigerian 419″ scam, adapted in this case to sucker in unwary Craigslist users.

Typically, the scam involves a bogus check being sent by a fraudster as a part of a transaction. The transaction is subsequently canceled and, before the bank has spotted the check as a phony, the fraudster requests some or all of his money back — money that the victim unknowingly pays out of his own pocket.

Shinnick said he wasn’t aware of the scam while he was negotiating to sell his bikes — his first foray onto Craigslist. But he was made suspicious by the unexpectedly large payment.

“That was kind of a red flag because it’s a lot of money,” he said. “I didn’t want to deposit it into my account because I didn’t want it to bounce.”

So Shinnick, who resides on Nob Hill, stopped by a BofA branch near Union Square in early January. He said he asked a teller if sufficient funds existed in the BofA business account to cover the check.

“She said it was a valid account and that there were funds to cover it,” Shinnick recalled. “I said, ‘Great,’ and asked to cash the check.”

He signed his name on the back.

What Shinnick didn’t know is that he’d just become party to a crime. The bank account may have been real but the check was phony.

What he also didn’t know is that, according to the police report for the case, a warning had been placed in BofA’s computer system to watch for fraudulent checks drawn on the account in question.

The teller contacted the business and was informed that no check had been written to Shinnick for $2,000 or any other amount. She immediately passed the check to the branch manager.

“I saw him talking on the phone and staring at me,” Shinnick said. “A few minutes later, four SFPD officers came into the bank. They didn’t say a thing. They just kicked my legs apart and handcuffed me behind my back.”

The police report for Shinnick’s arrest says he was taken into custody “for the safety of the bank employees as well as the bank customers.”

Shinnick said he was never read his rights. He said he was instructed by one of the cops to keep his mouth shut and not say anything. Shinnick said he remained handcuffed in the bank lobby for about 45 minutes while the police spoke with BofA workers.

“As people were coming in to do their banking, I was in plain view of everyone,” he recalled. “I was absolutely mortified.”

Shinnick was taken to Central Station on Vallejo Street, according to the police report. He said he was taken by van about an hour and a half later to the Hall of Justice on Bryant Street.

At the Hall of Justice, Shinnick said, he was finally allowed to call his parents after almost five hours in custody. He said he was photographed and fingerprinted, and then strip-searched and given an orange jumpsuit to wear.

“I was so humiliated, it was beyond belief,” he recalled. “It was an absolute, living nightmare. I felt like I was going to be one of those people who gets caught in the system and has no way of getting out.”

Shinnick said he was placed in a cell with about a dozen other inmates, mostly drug dealers and drug users.

“It was a small cell,” he said. “One guy was unconscious underneath the one toilet that was there for all of us to use. There was only one bed to sit on. I sat on the ground.”

Shinnick was finally released around 11:30 p.m., after his father paid $4,500 of $45,000 in bail. Within 24 hours, the district attorney’s office dropped all charges against Shinnick.

In July, a San Francisco Superior Court judge ruled that Shinnick was innocent by “findings of fact” — a decision that essentially erases all record of the case.

But by this time, Shinnick said, he’d spent about $14,000 clearing his name. He wanted that money back and he felt BofA should pay it.

BofA felt otherwise. Earlier this month, a bank vice president, William Minnes, wrote to Shinnick’s lawyer to say that “Bank of America can certainly understand that your client is angry at the bank.”

However, he said, BofA has no legal liability in the case because of the 2004 Supreme Court ruling. Minnes warned that “litigation would not prove financially beneficial” to Shinnick.

Minnes declined to comment when reached by phone this week.

The Supreme Court case, Hagberg vs. California Federal Bank, was remarkably similar to Shinnick’s. It involved a woman who presented an unusually large check for deposit from her stockbroker.

A teller believed the check was phony and called the police. The check turned out to be real, but by then the police had arrived and had handcuffed the woman.

The woman subsequently sued for damages, but the court ruled that all reports to the police are absolutely privileged. In other words, no liability can be connected to telling police of a suspected crime, whether real or not.

“The court wants to protect people when reporting criminal activity,” said Paul Glusman, a Berkeley attorney who has written about the Hagberg case. “But this can be abused. At this point, there’s nothing that will protect ordinary citizens from a false police report.”

Jennifer Becker, a San Francisco attorney who specializes in malpractice cases, stressed that the intent of the court’s decision is important. There shouldn’t be repercussions for reporting a suspected crime, she said.

But Becker observed that incidents of wrongful arrest “could get totally out of hand with online commerce and eBay and all the opportunities for fraud.”

Shinnick, who works as a salesman in a San Francisco clothing store, said it’s up to banks not to call the police until they’re certain that a crime has been perpetrated — and that the person standing there is a crook and not a victim.

“I’ve been in retail for 18 years,” he said. “I know about customer service and dealing with fraud. The way to handle something like this is to take the person into a back room and work things out before you call the police.”

Shinnick said he feels doubly violated: once by his wrongful arrest and a second time by BofA’s refusal to compensate him for his losses.

“It’s infuriating,” Shinnick said. “And if this could happen to me, it could happen to anyone. That’s what’s so scary about this.”

David Lazarus’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Send tips or feedback to dlazarus@sfchronicle.com.

To:  Federal Reserve

Overdraft protection…bounce protection…bank fees…

Banks make money off every customer they have nowadays. But one particular fee is immoral. Take a look at the following example. Bank are using a system that debits your account from highest transaction to lowest, not in order in which they were spent as most people think. This gives the bank more reasons to charge overdraft fees. If they take out the highest transactions first, all of those little transactions that your cash would have covered are each charge about $30 in overdraft fees. Take a look…

Day 1:
You have a balance in your checkbook of $100.
Stop at store, use Debit card, spend $60.
Stop for gas, use Debit card, spend $10
Have lunch use Debit, spend $15
Stopped at ATM for cash for the kids tomorrow and get $10
Quiz: what is balance? $5
That evening husband tells you he had to stop for gas and used Debit card and fill up his SUV on his way home from work that evening and it cost $45!

Balance? $-40.

Well dangit, you have overdrawn the account. But are somewhat perplexed because for some reason it let husband get $45 dollars in gas and didn’t decline the card and you were home hours before he was.

During the night the bank charges your account $6 for overdrawing.

Day 2
You think your balance should be -$76 because you know they are going to charge you $30 for the gas debit and $6 for overdrawing. Your write all this down in your register.
You go to bank make a deposit of $200 and note it in checkbook. Balance should be $124.00. Is it??? Well before you go crazy trying to figure it out, the answer is NO.

Because the bank takes the largest to the smallest out of your account while you are sleeping all snug in your bed. So you didn’t have one overdrafting transaction you had 3. The 2 $10 ones and the $15. The bank took out the $60 and $45 out first.

So that means even before the bank opened and you got your $200 deposit in there they bank already had claims to $90 for 3 transactions on day 1, $6 for overdrawing on Day 1, and another $6 for starting out Day 2 in the red. So they are going to take $102 of that $200 dollars you are going to deposit. So in your little check register that you are correctly adding and subtracting in you have your balance as $124 it’s really $58!

200
-40 cause husband spent 45 for gas and you only had 5 in there
-90 in overdraft fees b/c only the two largest transactions cleared.
-6 for overdrawing on Day 1
-6 for starting overdrawn on Day 2 (strange)
That leaves a balance of $58.00

You think you have $124 because no one from the bank has called or emailed me to tell me my balance, and I didn’t have time to call or check online this morning, soccer practice and all. We are still on Day 2 in case you have forgotten. The check register is all nice and neat and not addition or subtraction mistakes.

Husband asked how much is in the bank and you tell him $124. He says “good” because he’s got to get some stuff done to his truck today. Oil changed, tires rotated etc. Probably about 4 different stops. Doesn’t want to take the checkbook, he hates using that thing and he always brings home ATM and Debit receipts for me to record in that nice neat register.

Still on Day 2: Husband leave and does the following:
Stops at ATM for cash $60
Oil Change Debit $20
Tires rotated Debit $10

Brings receipts home and you record them in check register all nice and neat and make sure the subtraction is right on target. Your balance is: $34. But the bank has different ideas about your money. They feel that you have $-32. Now since the bank decided to set you up with the new concept called bounce protect, not to be confused with overdraft protection, where your checking account is linked to another account for a monthly fee. Husband didn’t have Debit card declined all day.

The first cash withdrawal right at the local branch should have been rejected. Which at that point he would have called and said, Hey I thought you said we had $124 in the bank. You would be in shock, get online to see what had happened.

Day 3:
Saturday and you don’t go anywhere and spend any money, husband had gotten cash yesterday if we needed anything.

Day 4: Sunday, just church and playing with kids at home.

Day 5: You think you have $34 in the bank. But in reality you start the day off -$146. Last night, while you were sleeping the bank moles were at work.

Those little boogers put their claim on $90 for all 3 transactions on Day 2 when husband was doing his thing, and then another $24 for overdrawing on Day 2, and being overdrawn on Saturday (Day 3) and Sunday (Day 4) and starting Day 5 (Monday) overdrawn.

Day 6: No activity except the $6 they charged you for being overdrawn.

Day 7: Another $6 charge and the mail man delivers you a letter that tells you that your account was charged $90 for three transactions that were presented for payment, and none of them were returned. How sweet, but that information is so old it’s nothing because even if you jotted that $90 in your checkbook, it too far gone to get it right EVER again!

Heck, I’m lost just giving this example for 7 wonderful days of banking with Fifth Third Bank.

Now do you see how quickly and how extreme this problem is? I didn’t have any idea they would let me get cash, use my ATM or even clear a check if the money wasn’t there.

From my research I have found that banks last year made 14 BILLION dollars with these fees last year. (how much was that tax cut Bush gave to help stimulate the economy)? Talk about the Fleecing of America, I would say this rates way up on the list.

This is not just hurting a few people, it’s hurting our entire nation! Less money to spend, loss of jobs, loss of income taxes, Federal, State and local. Not counting the unemployment from our government for those out of a job.

The Undersigned wish for banks to give us our money back!! These fees need to be reevaluated because it’s getting way out of hand! What is wrong with taking out transactions from the lowest-to-highest? This practice is not disclosed to consumers in any way, nor do we want it to be. We want this practice terminated.

Sincerely,