Why Banks Always Win: From Overdraft Fees in America to Wire Transfer Failures Abroad

I don’t know about you, but I’m delighted this week is finally over. Hello, April, I’m happy to see you, and I hope you’ll treat me and others better than March ever could. Here’s a new story for the books, as I still process the everyday realities of life living abroad. Then again, this exchange could very well have happened at home. The only difference is that I would have been able to talk to someone in person and actually solved everything sooner.

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The BOA Lesson

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Banking is always a pain in the backside, I don’t care where you live. I remember being in my teens and realizing that the moment the account goes negative, the bank is swarming in for their hit job. Banks live off people who bounce checks, overextend their accounts, or don’t time their purchases accordingly and go in the red. I really appreciate the ethical aspects of say, instead of freezing an account when it hits zero, some banks, like Bank of America, back in the day (probably now as well), will let the purchase go through, sort of, enough to charge you for the overdraft. Then, like magic, the next day, if you aren’t on top of your account, that same purchase tries again, and who, with a smile on their face, does another overdraft charge? Yep, BOA and other entities that really aren’t in business, save to make money off people who don’t know any better.

Could we say this is predatory? There might be a debate on that. At the very least, if one doesn’t take the time to read the fine print on the 1000-page agreement, it’s a surprise when these things come about. I’ll say I never got into any of these excessive charges, but my dear twin Stephen did. Sheesh, poor kid in his early twenties wrote a few checks, and they weren’t cashed in a timely manner. I remember the phone call, how pissed he was, because he figured once the checks were passed over, family members, companies, etc, immediately deposited them. 

This most definitely wasn’t the case, at least with the family members. For whatever reason, our dear relative held the check for several weeks, because I suppose it was too much of a hassle at the time to go into the flippin’ bank that was on their way to work. This was before direct deposit on our phones, so no chirping on that scenario, but if it were possible, then it would make this story even worse. 

Anyway, dear Stephen goes to the bank and takes out some money. He sees his receipt and is pleasantly surprised to find that he has more money in his account than he thought, so he partied and lived it up for another weekend of fun. 

Now don’t get me started on why he should have double-checked his ledger and not simply estimated his purchases to get a rough idea of what his account would be. As a math teacher, I’ll tell you that people who aren’t going to keep a close eye on their budgets should probably forgo bank accounts entirely and simply use cash to get around. Let’s cast that point aside for the time being. Stephen was careless and assumed his checks had already been deposited and cleared. That was his bad. 

None of them had gone through yet, let alone been deposited. To make a long story short, a few weeks later, his account is not only negative but several hundred dollars in the hole. What I bloody love about BOA was the constant double-charging once the account dropped below zero. Maybe it’s changed since then, but his account was easily -300 dollars. I can’t unsee the triple hits for having a negative account, then the hits for bouncing the checks, and then some other insane charge that BOA added to the fray for good measure. 

I’m still pissed on his behalf, and it’s been twenty-five years. Could he have been more attentive to the account, of course? Could our relatives have actually deposited their check in a timely manner? That, for me, is a bigger pain in my backside, simply because I don’t understand why people hold on to checks once they get them. 

Unless you are a landlord at the beginning of the month and you are waiting for multiple tenants, it doesn’t make sense. One time, my sister had a check deposited ten months (or some ridiculous number) after the fact. Who the heck does that? Even with a ledger, I’m going to assume that one was deposited. 

Anyway, I can rant about that side topic another day. Let’s keep focused on the banks. Poor Stephen was strapped for cash, trying to pay his bills, but now he owes a significant amount to the bank. Did they freeze his account? No, absolutely not, because they wanted to keep charging him for the negative equity, which at this point was all their fees. 

What good came out of this ordeal was that, so annoyed by all those fees, I made sure to keep an excessive buffer in my account so it would never bounce. So yay me, I guess. But not everyone has that luxury. Fast forward several years, and I got rid of my BOA account and, for that matter, refuse to go back to certain national banks, especially the ones that got government money during the 2008 crisis, even though it was their bad practices that created some of that ridiculous mess.

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Same Game, Different Country

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I’m all fired up now on this topic, realizing we could go in so many directions. Focusing, though, on the present, I loved living in Poland because my account there was set up so that you couldn’t go negative. Again, it wouldn’t have been my intention, as a responsible adult and a math teacher who lives on a budget, to do that, but I still appreciated that the account was effectively blocked at that number. The card wouldn’t work, nothing could be taken out, the way it should be. 
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As for life in Morocco, I have no clue about the specifics of my current bank account, aside from two things. One, I get around a five-dollar service charge each month for holding my money, and any money sent (like my rent) to a non-bank member is subject to an additional one-dollar surcharge. Granted, these aren’t deal breakers, but they remind me of BOA and not my current banking institutions in the States, where I don’t have any monthly fees or charges. In addition, accessing the online account is nearly impossible, and the app only appears to work well during traditional business hours. The number of times it’s frozen up on me is comical.

The second issue I have with this bank is that I believe the bank supervisor is a schmuck. That’s my bottom line. My employer steered us to this bank for “ease of use” and to this point of contact, who is as phony as they come. He might as well be a used-car salesman trying to get me to buy a forty-five-year-old Pinto. 

If I were staying in this country long-term, I would be looking for a new place to put my funds. Quick story on the schmuck. We all know this type of person, but it’s still worth mentioning, because customer service honestly goes a long way in my world, and being a good human being in general. I’ll admit, I’m not one for small talk with strangers. I try to be pleasant and somewhat friendly, but I also don’t go out of my way to start conversations. 

In the United States, it’s a little different; it’s more of a cultural norm in Maine and New Hampshire to at least talk about the weather, some random cultural event, or the Patriots. With that said, this past week, for the second time in a year, the bank screwed up my transfer home. We have done 15 wire transfers. That’s right, so this isn’t an unknown commodity, but still, whether it’s at this branch office or the headquarters in Casablanca, someone’s job is to approve all of these transfers.

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The Wire Transfer Fiasco 

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Last year at this time, they put in the wrong number. They literally took every cent out of my account, as though I had intended to zero it out. My actual wire transfer form was 2000 dollars less than what they transferred. Thankfully, the woman I worked with caught the error and called me to double-check the number. She apologized for the head office not doing the amount that I actually signed off on, and within hours, my local account was swimming in money again, and my American account had the correct amount. In effect, a crisis was averted, and everything was transferred promptly. 

Last week, a completely different scenario played out. I went in to do the monthly wire transfer and made sure the woman I worked with followed the exact procedure we always did. One day passes; the money is withdrawn from my Moroccan account. Two days pass, three, four, five, and nothing has appeared in my American account. Baffled, I reached out to one of the women I had worked with before and asked her to look into it for me. She said she would and that everything appeared to be in order.

Two more days pass, and guess whose wire transfer was denied? This guy, and it wasn’t because of the form, it was because of the blasted headquarters personnel or whoever finalizes all these, didn’t do their blasted job. Unlike last year, when everything was straightened out quickly over the phone, I had to come back inside and repeat the entire process. 

Now let’s cue the schmuck, the bank manager who sits in his office and spends more time looking at his flippin' phone than helping a few people when the one or two tellers are swamped by the influx of customers. I sit down at the table as my rep begins issuing the wire transfer. 

This guy, on cue, walks by. He sees me and offers me his hand.
“Hey. How are you doing?”
I replied with, “Well enough.” 
He didn’t even stop, but kept walking and said something like, “Me too. I’m good. Thanks.” 
I watched him continue his walk to the door as he slid out his vape for a well-deserved break. 

Why even greet me? Seriously? If you aren’t going to really engage, even from a customer service aspect, then just walk by so I don’t label you as a glorified douchebag. This is not the first time we have had this introduction. Every single time, I wait to see whether he stops or is so caught up in appearances that he assumes I asked how he was doing. Talk about someone on autopilot. 

Full disclosure: Years ago, I stopped asking people how they were doing because I wanted to see if they were actually listening. Maybe I’m a dick for not engaging, but the point is, if you want to have a conversation or be pleasant, then do just that. If your intention is simply to give the appearance that you are interested, but then blow by, that’s flawed to begin with.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to work with him to finalize my wire transfer. While I processed the fact that he was doing his same schtick with other men sitting in the waiting area, I simply wanted to go home, knowing this transaction should be good to go.

Days later, the money appeared where it was supposed to be, but in a typical big bank fashion, did they reimburse me the $52 for the failed wire transfer, the one they screwed up on? Of course not, because how else can the manager afford his designer suits and keep up his schmoozing habits? 

Maybe some things never do change, or the universe wanted to remind me whether it’s my twin brother fighting the good fight with BOA twenty plus years ago, or me in the present, most banks are going to find a way to take money from you, whether you have a balanced budget or not. Then again, I did say it was April, right? Uncle Sam wants his money, too. I guess I’ll get right on that. Do you want a check or a transfer? I ask my brother to get right on it… ​