Cash Advances News Break: Banks challenge OFT overdraft ruling

LONDON (SHARECAST) – Eight high street banks are today turning to the High Court in a bid to overturn a ruling on bank overdraft charges.

Your Cash Advances News Source Quoted With Edits From: Banks challenge OFT overdraft ruling (Sharecast)

When Irresponsibility Bites Back

There’s nothing worse than getting a unexpected letter in the mail from your personal bank. First you suspect another credit card offer but not seeing the familiar APR printed boldly on the outside of the blank envelope, you know it’s about to get personal. Sure enough, as you open the letter you find that somewhere along the way you made a mistake in the balancing of your check book. For me personally, not that it happens to often, it’s the debit card that gets me into trouble. I simply forget to write things down sometimes and then I end up needing cash advances to cover the fees.

The True Cost of a Small Mistake

The real crux of the issue is that by the time you find out that you have over drafted your account, your account has been hit more than one time. I once had over 300 dollars in overdraft charges for a small handful of checks that I wrote for minuscule amounts. Although the totals of the checks that were written after the funds were found to be insufficient, were very small,  the overdraft fees are the same per check. My smallest charge was for a Snickers candy bar at 60 cents, but because my account was overdrawn, the cost to me was 60 cents plus the overdraft fee of $30. The total: $30.60, Ouch! At least their good!

This is a hard hit to take and when you find yourself in this situation it is easy to get in an uproar but ultimately it was a result of personal error, or lack of responsibility on my part.

Should the Overdraft Ruling be Challenged?

Writing small checks can lead to huge overdraft fees

This raises questions in my mind in regards to the proposed overdraft ruling. My bank made it very known to me upon opening a checking account, what the consequences would be of over drafting it. They strongly advised against it and explained to me the consequences that were set in place.

So in all fairness, even with my distaste for overdraft fees, I don’t think the banks should be challenged on their overdraft fees as they are set in place to keep their clients from making these types of mistakes. I myself would be more cautious were the fees more than they are now.

The fact is, we all get to choose the bank that we want to do business with, this by itself will help regulate these fees as the competition among banks for market share is fierce. If customers aren’t pleased with the practices and or policies of their personal banks than they will move to another.

If you have been struck by pesky overdraft fees and need quick cash to cover the costs, you can apply for cash advances with Personal Money Store.