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Is it legal that banks sort deposits
to optimize the amount of fees they assess your account?

I want to start a class-action lawsuit and get this practice made illegal. Six transactions come in on a single day. Irrespective of how they are received by the bank, they are always sorted before they are posted against my account, from the highest dollar amount to the lowest. This, many times, allows the bank to collect a $25 charge for every item, instead of the item or two that they are really due. So the $7.00 transaction ends up costing $32.00, when had the transaction been processed in the order it was made, over $150.00 in overdraft protection charges would have only been $25.00 for the single item which I didn’t have enough to cover.

Why do banks practice the sort optimization for increased revenues? Because nobody has every pushed to have a fair practice policy by a bank. In most cases, you can call the bank and they will drop one or two of the overdraft charges just by asking. Is there any other instance in banking that this is true? Absolutely not, with the exception of getting a better interest rate on your credit card because they are raping you for 21%. They give back some of the money because they don’t want anybody making a big stink about just how much money they are making over and above what they are reasonably and legitimately due. If some legislation were made that, say, made banks sort all transaction posted in batches for the day be sorted from the lowest to the highest, banks would reduce their revenues by hundreds of thousands or even millions a day (in the case of the top 10 largest banks).

I’ve been told everything as for the reasons why the banks do this. “We pay the largest bills first since they are likely mortgages payments and the like”. That’s absolute bull. They pay the bills largest to smallest because it makes them more money, (3 to 5+ times more) and it comes out of the pocket of you-know-who.

To answer my own question: Yes, it is legal for banks to sort deposits from largest to smallest, but not because of some sound reasoning or logic. It’s just that nobody has said it’s unfair, and probably should be against the banking laws. The banks wouldn’t lose any money by practicing a friendly and fair policy, they just wouldn’t be making so much so fast at the financial demise of their customers.

MORE STUPID COMPUTER TRICKS

So I went online with my bank today, and discovered a dispute, which I’ll write more about later, but thought I would work to resolve it by using the Live Help link, whereby an employee of the bank can text-chat with me about my access.

Hello, my name is Juan. How can I help you today?

Hi Juan, I noticed that an overdraft charge was applied to my account before I actually over drafted? I noticed this yesterday, and thought it suspicious. Could you take a look please?

I’m sorry, but since this is over an unsecured communications method, I cannot discuss specifics regarding you account information. I’m sure you can see how this is for your protection.

Well, yes. I could, if it actually was for my protection. See, I logged onto the bank using my user ID and password over a 128-bit encrypted communications channel. I had my account information up on the screen as I was chatting with the agent. I could have cut him a check if I wanted to, so what gives? Thanks for wasting my time. Somebody put a notice up on the website that the Live Chat is only for idiots who don’t know how to use a mouse to click on their account number, not for anybody that actually wants to conduct some business.