Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "The End of Overdraft Fees? It's Finally Happening" video.

@GenerationX1984 Would it have been more acceptable if it was $5 worth of gas to get to work?
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It's particularly weird because negative signs aren't normally used for that sort of thing. It's more common for them to use parentheses to indicate that it's negative or to have all the numbers be positive, just debits or credits as appropriate. A financial statement may have negative numbers, but not typically in most other financial documents. Using a minus sign and then putting it far from the number it reflects is either incompetence or fraud.
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What's worse is that often times they would sequence the transactions so that rather than one transaction hitting the overdraft, multiple ones would. Even before one of my credit unions went overdraft free, there was a lower fee of a few dollars for them just transferring the money from savings to checking. It still sucked, but it was a lot cheaper than getting hit with a fee from both sides when the check bounced. (That ought to have been criminal, why should somebody pay two banks for one bounced check?)
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It's somewhat better these days as the transactions usually go through more quickly and it's easier to get the current balance. Personally, I have an additional checking account with my local credit union for things that I think may take longer to go through. It makes it a lot easier to know how much money in my checking account is actually available, I simply transfer the necessary funds to the other debit card account and eventually the money goes away, but I clearly know the money is spoken for.
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@kuroryuken One of the nice things about now is that most banks have apps that can be used to check the balance so that that doesn't happen. 9 years ago, there's a decent chance that that wasn't an option or that the website was further behind where your actual balance was.
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Or you can just close the account and open one at a credit union, assuming you've got an account there. Just having a bunch of people closing their accounts would probably achieve the same basic goal, just without having to lobby corrupt politiburo officials.
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Them and the careless.
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Both of my credit unions have ended overdraft fees. One of them did away with them completely and the other did away with them in most situations. Personally, even before that I switched to a two checking account system to avoid having that problem. If I have to write a check or have payments that won't have the money removed immediately, I'll do that out of the second account. I'll transfer the necessary money and I don't have to worry about things bouncing or having to keep track of it. I'll start with some reasonably about of money to ensure that I have something there even after everything clears. It works great, although finding a credit union or bank that doesn't charge the fees is probably a better choice.
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@danhedman8435 They're not. They can either transfer money from a different account, which is what my credit unions do, or they can refuse to honor the request for money. With computer technology being where it is, there's no reason why they can't transfer the money for you. (Although whether or not they should gets a tad complicated as there's many reasons why a charge to an account may not be a valid one)
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It wasn't just them, the official excuse was that larger charges were probably more important. But, regardless, it had the effect of changing what might have only been one or two overdrafts into potentially several times more.
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