

Good morning, you owe us $887,180 dollars and 48 cents - Prefect
http://praetorianprefect.com/archives/2009/10/good-morning-you-owe-use-887180-dollars-and-48-cents/

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jrwoodruff
Use credit unions for your everyday checking and savings. I got tired of being
treated like a rounding error at my local corporate bank and opened a checking
account with a credit union. Some benefits:

\- $1000 overdraft loan

\- No $30 charges for overdrawing $0.25

\- Interest earning checking account

\- Automatic foreign ATM fee reimbursement up to $30/month

\- personal service

\- ability to vote out directors

Not saying that an error like the one in this article won't happen at your
credit union, but I doubt they would let you leave the building without
resolving the issue.

I can't say enough about what the credit union has done for my financial
health.

~~~
keltex
I concur with this one. And this isn't the worst of what these large banks do.
How about where they have a computer program which re-orders transactions (out
of their normal chronological order) in such as way as to maximize overdraft
fees.

For example, let's say that you have $100 in your account and pay transactions
of $20, $50, and $110 (in that order) with your debit card.

Instead of letting the first 2 go through and then hitting you with a $30
overdraft fee on the last one, or maybe even rejecting the charge, they
instead put the $110 charge first. Charge you a $30 overdraft fee and then
since your account is overdrawn, hit you with 2 more $30 fees for the $10 an
$20 transactions.

The backlash against this sort of behavior has made the banks back off, but do
you really want to do business with an institution that treats the customer
this way?

~~~
anigbrowl
This practice looks set to be outlawed soon, to the the banks' chagrin:
[http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?st...](http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14710667)
I had an entertaining episode earlier this year where I went into a bank to
dispute about $100 of charges that had been levied this way; after some
effort, I persuaded a bank official to handle the call on speakerphone -
literally, by refusing to take the handset she kept trying to hand me and
insisting it be on speakerphone - and letting the phone staff explain at
length about their large-to-small temporal reordering, before pointing out
that I had made a cash deposit both larger and earlier than the withdrawals.
And the phone people _still_ didn't want to back down until I produced a
digital recorder and pointed out that I'd recorded the entire conversation.

Following this debacle I had an illuminating conversation with the manager at
the local branch. Part of the issue (with many large banks) is that they've
internally reorganized so that the branch network is a separate company from
the bank, and the outrageous overdraft fees, $3 ATM fees etc. are what
finances the branch network.

This allows the bank to claim to customers and regulators that they don't make
any profit off these fees (because technically the fees are collected on
behalf of 'Megabank Branch Operations LLC') while at the same time claiming to
their investors and bondholders that they've cut their expenses to the bone
(because the branch operations no longer show up as an expense on their
balance sheet, whereas the profits from things like mortgages do).

So when you try to get a fee reversed, neither the phone nor the local branch
people want to do it because the reversal will be charged to them and reflect
on their performance record. Local branches now have about as much influence
on The Bank as an individual fast-food restaurant has on the franchise
company, ie none at all. Plus, anyone who went to work for a bank at a local
branch with the aim of eventually becoming a banker has been suckered, since
local banking is now devoted to basic customer service and sales of financial
products but they have little or no discretion the handling of customers'
accounts. Working your way up the corporate ladder is now out; if you want to
be in banking rather than customer service, you need to get an MBA and re-
apply to corporate, hoping your time in local branch banking will give you an
edge over other candidates - but word is that customer-facing experience is
actually regarded as a disadvantage.

tl;dr the modern model of retail banking is to own the deposit/payment system,
not get your hands dirty with it.

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axod
Using 'special' numbers seems like a really bad idea. Wonder if someone did
transfer $888,888.88 out, and then contacted fraud, could they convince them
that it was an error and get the money refunded to their account, whilst
keeping the money that was transferred? Probably a long shot, might make a fun
movie script though :/

~~~
boredguy8
No. Seriously, why do you think that would even be possible?

All transfers have tracking information and source/destination information.
Not only would your withdraw request be denied (insufficient funds), but also
they would identify that it wasn't an internal transfer.

~~~
abstractbill
1) Open an account with, say, $1M as the opening balance.

2) Withdraw $888,888.88

3) Armed with a bank statement showing this transaction, and everything that's
online about this magic number, threaten to go to the media with your story
unless the bank "refunds" your missing money. The bank doesn't want to lose
all its customers so it gives in, even though it knows you're ripping it off.
Kevin Spacey plays the bad guy.

Good enough (maybe, just) for a movie script at least. In reality I'm sure
step 4 is "Go to prison".

~~~
anigbrowl
Why so complicated? Just buy a failing bank and ask the treasury to give you
the money. Futz about for a year or two then complain that your hands were
tied by regulators and you weren't able to make a profit. Resign in tears,
collect a fat severance check, and go to work for the SEC.

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eru
Please correct the title. (Or is `use' there on purpose?)

~~~
catch23
it's probably 'us'

~~~
mahmud
or perhaps U.S.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
> or perhaps U.S.

If that was the case, the owing would be the other way around and the amount
would be orders of magnitude larger.

------
jrockway
Good morning, good luck collecting.

