Fifth Third Bank / 53.com review: overdraft fee abuse ( 2 comments)

Just last week 5/3 (Fifth Third Bank) charged me $444 in overdraft fees in one day. There was about $4000 in my account, its a busy business account. Traveling, I used the debit card on several occaisions earlier in the week to pay for trip expenses. In one night a $3000 check and a $1000 check went through, leaving an overdraft amount around $1000. In the morning when the bank opened, I called them and said I would be in directly after a morning appointment to make a deposit to cover the overdraft amount. I made a deposit of $1380 at 1030 that morning. There were 11 transactions that went through on the same date as the checks. Several of these were actually charged/purchased by me in the preceding days. The overdraft fee is $37.

So for what is actually an overdraft on one check, the bank justifies charging thier customer 12 overdraft fees. It didnt end there. The next day the charged me another $185 in fees and another $30 in fees. The next day another $6 fee. The next day another $18. The next day another $37 even though a $4875 wire transfer was recieved prior to the fee. Who knows why.
So if one doesn't agree or pay the fees, they are written off on the Checkcare System (or similar) and can not open a new account. I had several accounts with Firth Third to deal with the several boats that I manage. They have snowballed overdrafts on me before by
1) Debit Card Purchases - Even though the amount is deducted from the available balance, when the charge is made, they put the charge through 1 - 4 days later, pretty much it seems waiting for a larger check to go through, and then charge an overdraft fee on it.
2) Reordering Transaction Order - "We put the largest transactions through first" is their story and this benefits us. ### is thick here. The only reason they reorder transactions is to screw their customer and take our funds. There is no better definition of bottom sucking ### than the execs who think that in the long run this isn't going to bite them in the ###.
3) So many overdraft fees and delayed and reordered transactions almost certainly guarantee them a much greater possibility of substantially more overdraft fees, daily over the limit fees, and whatever other fees they make up.