Usury is defined as the lending of money at an exorbitant rate of interest. What do you think about a bank that charges a thirty-five dollar overdraft fee on a five dollar purchase? According to my third grade math, that’s a 700 percent charge. Grandpa tells me gangsters used to be put in jail for much less than that back in the good ole days. But wait, the bank is calling the charge overdraft protection. This is as innocuous as Wall Street calling a bad day a “haircut.” Overdraft charge my ass! It’s called usury. In perspective, a $200,000 home loan at 700 percent interest would have a monthly payment of $116,660 per month. Compound interest is a bitch!
How Do They Get Away With It
Federal law now requires that banks like Wells Embargo must provide an opt-out agreement to customers before they can charge their Al Caponish Fees. An opt-out agreement tells the bank, “No you can’t pay a $5.00 ATM charge and then charge my account $35.00. Why doesn’t the bank simply decline the purchase? You know, like the good old days when you tried to charge a purchase and the clerk looked at you funny, and said, sorry but it’s declined.
The I.T. on a transaction like this isn’t tough; my sixth grader could write a spreadsheet program that could handle it in ten minutes. Ah, but it’s not about technology; it’s about profit. Banks like Wells Embargo who received plenty of bail-out funding (or they would have bounced their own checks) are more interested in profit than fairness. When I approached a operations officer in Southern California about their draconian policies, she just looked at me with a blank stare and said we’re doing the customer a favor by paying their bills. Oh really…You mean charging my second year college student $105 on $36 in purchases, on three transactions, fair? Blank stare.
Bank Overdraft Fees Are a Big Profit Center for Banks
According to the New York Times, Wells Fargo, collected nearly $1.8 billion in overdraft fees in California alone from 2005 to 2007. You know, when you can’t make it in home loans, stick it people who make small purchases and who can’t afford to fight the charges. In fact, the whole banking industry is in cahoots because they have a system called “Check Systems” which monitors customers who bounce checks or have accounts closed because of bank charges. If my second year college student told Wells Embargo to shove it up their bass, she couldn’t open another account with another bank, with the unpaid overdrafts on her record.
If banks were in the gambling business they’d tell customers to “Go Luck Themselves.”
Write Your Congressman or Embargo Wells
The federal government has already started a crack down on usurious overdraft fees, but banks are still getting away with it. Banks have to play by the same rules as everyone else. You get the feeling that bank employees should be walking around in dark suits carrying violin cases dropping “Fohgetaboutits” when customers complain about stupid bank charges. Banks are actually fighting the feds in court. They think they’re entitled to charge 300 to 400 percent interest on small transactions. Wait, I forgot it’s not interest, it’s an overdraft fee. If it looks like a duck and squawks like a duck, and shits in the road like a duck, it’s a duck.
Wells Embargo by Kelly Bowlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International
