The Online Banking Ripoff

Dateline: Lake Geneva Wisconsin.

I have been writing about some banking phenomenon going on across the country of late.
I liken it to the luggage fees charged by the airlines. Outrageous? Absolutely, these luggage fees, but at least the airlines tell you what the fees are and what you are going to have to pay.

Here’s the latest in banking scams for all of those of you out there that do your banking mostly online now.

What the banks are doing is as follows: they are indicating on your online account that money has either transferred into your account or you’ve successfully moved it from one account to another on a specific date at a specific times on your screen. You can see the money on your screen in your account right in front of you.

Well, it’s not there, many times.

That’s right, later in the day you write a check or transfer money from the account you saw the money in (and know the money was there) but it wasn’t. They just showed you online the money was there. You are induced to spend what is not really there on the banks books and you overdraft. You go to the screen and look to see that your money actually was credited the day after you absolutely know you put it in and saw it. If you take a screenshot of the balance you see (in my case, a transfer from one account to another inside the same bank) and take it in to complain, well, the bankers will merely stare at you and scratch their heads. After they send your screenshot and complaint up to the executives located somewhere else in a bunker, your accounts will be terminated and your reputation with other banks hurt.

This is the new banking scam and it’s perfectly legal.

The small print on the agreement you signed to take your accounts online says that the data does not have to be reliable even if they put it up there and you see right in front of you.