As one must have noticed in the US Visa TV Commercials, debit cards are hailed as the ultimate convenience for small purchases at food stands, convenience markets, and other places where charges are below 10 USD. That is great but apparently on the receiving end, the banks treat these as check transactions which means that they will apply overdraft fees if for any reason you exceed your balance. At the same time they will honor any amount without regard to the available balance (something about convenience while travelling and a lot of our excuses to rip you off), only to add a $34 overdraft fee when it hits your account. Actuall it is very easy to be overdrawn since most banks will treat the credit card approval as a potential charge locking the corresponding amount regardless if the charge comes in or not. If that amount is around your entire balance, consequently checks that arrive after this "approval" will be treated as overdrafts and charge an overdraft fee around $34 for most banks. The overdraft fee is independent of the amount of the overdrawn item so it is very likely that you may end up paying an extra $34 for a sandwich purchase of $5 !!!
Apparently there is a lot of that going on. Check out the reports at the Rip-off report site This is a Wells Fargo queue but representative of many other banks.
Is it me or did the old decline methods are gone. If there is no money in the account why they do not decline the transaction so that they alert you of the problem instead of pilling on fees? We know that banks are businesses that want to make money, not wellfare institutions but their fee structures are dubious.
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