Clusterstock is a finance news site with a very pro-capitalist readership. Read the comments if you want to see the anti-banking sentiment. When a bunch of capitalists agree that banks are robbing people, something very criminal is ocurring.
There are some good comments regarding the shady practice of overdraft fees. It's definately time to reform overdraft fee process. I am sure some libertarian will say that it's FREEDOM OF CONTRACT! Those people would also say that Nero and Caligula did indeed publish the laws in Rome. So what if no one could read the laws. They were there.... somewhere.
Oh, and yes, I paid $26.40 for a Starbucks once. While in law school, my direct deposit hit my account a few hours late. This was before the days of online banking made it easy to simply check my account first thing in the morning.
As a young, naive student, I thought a DEBIT card was different. It's a debit card, so if I don't have money in my account, it won't work. Right? Right? Isn't that why a DEBIT card is different from a CREDIT card?
Had I know that my deposit was going to hit my account late, I would not have purchased my Starbucks. Why didn't my card just shut me off. Oh, that's right: The bank wanted to do me a FAVOR by authorizing the charge.
This one (not mine) should make anyone's all-time-greatest list:
A friend of mine CLOSED an account before moving out of state. She forgot she linked her (rarely-used) iTunes to it. She made a $0.99 purchase months later. The bank let the charge go through against the CLOSED account, and charged her an overdraft. She hadn't left a forwarding address for her CLOSED account, so the bank had no way to contact her.
The bank kept tacking on additional fees, all unbeknown to my friend, and finally put her on a private industry blacklist of check bouncing deadbeats, which there is no way to get off of, and now denies her access to any mainstream financial services, like opening a bank account, for SEVEN YEARS.
As to myself? I once wanted to write a check for the full amount of my account balance. I checked the balance at the ATM, including getting a mini-statement to know if my last checks had cleared. Then I wrote a check for the amount on the balance statement. Guess what? They charged me $1 for the statement, AFTER it was printed, so I got an overdraft fee.
F**K these fees and these banks. It's deliberate exploitation, and has nothing to do with holding people responsible for their behavior as you claim.
