So it looks like Bank of America is responding to the national mood andbacking off on their fees. Having been walloped on more than one occasion, I would appreciate a change for the better. The fees seem excessive for what amounts to a very short-term loan, and I’m not a fan of the “punishment” strategy for those who spend more than they have. It would be nice if cards would automatically decline purchases when you don’t have enough to spend, and it seems that they are making concessions in that direction as well.
One thing about Bank of America’s overdraft strategy was to send the bigger items through first. This benefited the customer in that large payments like rent and car payments would be the first to clear. However, customers would then get hit with a bunch of fees for any smaller transactions that cleared as well. For example, with a $1000 balance and a $1000 rent check, $25 purchase, $10 purchase, and $3 miscellaneous purchase, the check would clear first, followed by the other three items in descending order resulting in $105 in fees. If the transactions were processed in the other order, the smaller ones would clear before the balance was negative with only $35 in fees.
This doesn’t affect debit cards so much as checks, and it sounds like they’ll allow a certain amount of overdrafts per account per year before warning the customer and restricting overdrafts for the rest of the year. I hope this doesn’t mean they’ll end up with bounced rent checks, but I don’t think Bank of America is known for their generosity and will likely look to make up the lost revenue elsewhere.
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