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

[turil.livejournal.com]

Sure, but that's not the way any bank does it.

While Wainwright may be a better bank than others, it's still a bank, and still has the job of making money for it's owners. It's not a non-profit.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Except, as you fail to notice, banks do NOT clearly state this practice to their customers.

That IS deceptive.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Have you actually read the small print?

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Wait, this is coming from the same person who blogged that In fact much of the culture and policies are intentionally designed to make people fail.

Yes, i actually did read the fine print - every time I join a new bank.

And no where, in any of the fine print that was provided to me, was there any mention of processing bigger, BUT later, debits first.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Yes, this coming from the same person who said that much of society is designed to make people fail. Banks included. For-profit business requires that you lose, so that they can win.

And I do indeed hope that we can find a way to move past this zero-sum approach to life.

But railing against Wainwright for doing what all banks normally do (make money off of fees) is not going to get us there, as far as I'm concerned.

[cos]

> But railing against Wainwright for doing what all banks normally do

Wainwright's corporate image is as a socially responsible bank that's more ethical than other banks, and does better for our community. That's how they drew a lot of customers from larger banks around here. When they fail to live up to that stated, public aspiration, railing against it is exactly what we should do.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Better to spend your limited resources creating something positive, I'd say. Why not start a Davis Square community credit union non-profit-bank so that we can be in charge of our own money and invest it even more directly in the community?

[cos]

I think you'd be better off spending your limited resources ceasing your pointless comment crusade to convince everyone else here that the perfectly reasonable and *useful* things they're suggesting are useless. Your cynicism on this matter is not "creating something positive" so why are you wasting so much of your time?

[turil.livejournal.com]

Because I'm doing what I do, trying to get people to think. If people didn't enjoy talking to me, they'd stop. But people do like to think. People do like to challenge themselves. So I offer what I can. I'm not perfect, but I do manage to sometimes help people find more creative and positive ways to live.

The fake Spare Change guy must have talked to you then.

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

He did find a more creative and positive way to live: scamming people.

Re: The fake Spare Change guy must have talked to you then.

[turil.livejournal.com]

In what way is that positive? Most folks would classify scams as negative.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

...But if you mainly hope to win customers from Bank of America by marketing your values, participating in this most unethical of business practices would be the business equivalent of shooting one's self in the foot.

It is basically stealing, but they get away with it because there are a lot of gray areas in this country's system of bank regulation. Think about it:

As of 9 am your account has a balance of $100. At 9:01 am you use your debit card to buy a $2 cup of coffee. Your account now has a balance of $98 (at least in theory). At 4:59 pm, you purchase groceries totaling $101. VOILA! You are charged for TWO overdrafts! And the only justification is that the bank is free to "process" your transactions in any order they want (rather than the order in which they actually happened).

I guess my point is that a lot of people, including myself, put up with the inferior rates and inferior online banking system and scan number of ATMs because they believe very strongly that banks should not try to pad their bottom lines at the expense of their most financially strapped customers. If they're not willing to do that to win my business, what's the point of making all these sacrifices?