Wainwright Bank Stole My Grocery Money

[redheadedmuse.livejournal.com]

After almost 10 years of doing business with Wainwright, I finally jumped ship this week after they charged me almost $100 in overdraft fees - even though my statement shows no overdraft at all.

As I said in my open letter to them, this is not just my issue. Banks are poised to rake in over $38 billion in overdraft fees this year, and Congress has just approved new regulations making the kind of sneaky accounting and overdraft "protection" racket Wainwright is using illegal. Those regulations haven't gone into effect yet, but I would have hoped our neighborhood "progressive" bank would be ahead of the curve in this important social justice issue.

I'm disappointed that a local bank that advertises itself as "banking on values" would treat its customers this way. It's a deceptive and predatory practice that traps financially marginalized people in a painful cycle of debt they can't get out of. Shame on you, Wainwright.

Comments

[redheadedmuse.livejournal.com]

No, that's not it all. The crux of the issue, as I said pretty clearly in my letter, is that they processed a group of transactions out of order so that they could charge me additional "overdraft" fees on cash withdrawals made when there was plenty of money in my account.

That style of accounting, combined with high fees and a policy of automatically enrolling people in this "overdraft protection" that allows the bank to quietly process overdrafts and then charge exorbitant fees, is a bad practice that perpetuates cycles of poverty. Someone living on a very tight budget literally can't afford to suddenly lose $100+ to bank fees; they'll bounce another check because of it, and repeat that system indefinitely.

I would have hoped Wainwright would take a more ethical approach.

[rosiewoodboat.livejournal.com]

...as I said pretty clearly in my letter...

Sorry, it wasn't clear to me. The commenter above clarified. Thanks!

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

It was not clear to me either when I read it.

[turil.livejournal.com]

That wasn't clear to me either. But regardless, the fact that you admit to is that you simply didn't have enough money in the account for all the things they paid for over the weekend. So the bank was correct to fine you as that's the way your account works, and you knew it.

Again, I agree that you should have the option of the old way of doing business where the bank doesn't spend more of your money than they have. But you knew that this account/bank did have overdraft protection, so you can't be surprised that what you did resulted in a fine.