MontanaXVI

Here is a problem I ran into recently and had it not been with my good long standing history with the credit union I could have been deep in some fees on my account.

I have been with my work credit union for close to 10 years or so give or take a few years (I have been at my employer for 12 years as of next week I opened the account not long after getting employment) Well as time went on I added my gf to the account and eliminated hers which was also at the same credit union. Well with us both having direct deposit the majority of our check goes into the savings and we just transfer chunks of it at a time to have in checking for bills, auto payments and the such. Well over the weekend we had some expenses clearing, the usual debit card use for shopping, dinner entertainment and the such, well we had not looked at the account and seen that we were going to be short so we did not transfer any money over to cover. Today I get a call at work from the gf stating we were in the hole and that there were a ton (to the tune of about $200 total) of insufficient funds charges on the account. I as suprised to hear also that they had not used the savings (which is in our bank rules I guess you could say) as the overdraft protection like they have done a couple times in the past. The total amount in savings was 5 TIMES more than the charges, and the penalties fees COMBINED, so I was very upset over all this. After a few calls to the branch manager and the tellers we were told that you have 6 online transfers per month mandated by the government and no way around it. We knew this though but were more shocked to hear that these transfers counted against any overdraft charges that may be needed as well. So for those of you not following along we had logged onto our banks website 4 times in the last month and moved money from savings to checking to cover, well the bank used our last 2 transfers for the month then sat there looking at all the money and said with us having hit our 6 transactions they were not able to access the money in savings to use for overdraft. I was flabbergatsed at this news and was very upset thinking about all the fees I was now going to have to pay. Another call to the branch manager explaining everything to her and all was cleared up she removed all the penalties from the account and was going to debit the account for the transfers that had been rejected for IF, due to us having been with them for so long and she did not want to lose a customer (or the money). So kudos to her on the GREAT customer service.


So those of you who do online banking and may have a savings account that is used for overdraft might want to check into this and make sure you too do not get hit like this. They told us the limit of 6 is imposed by the federal government and there is nothing you can do about it, except to do transfers in person or at an ATM, but online you are limited to 6 a month. Then ask if it applies to your overdraft as well it just might help you in the long run to know all this.

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Spank you very much