Florida Bank Atlantic ripped me off.....Let's kick some bankers' asses, OWS!!!!!

[Gato Moteado]

I closed all my bank acounts.....left BOA years ago. Now I'm banking with a credit union.

But, last year while in Miami visiting, i got an account at Florida Bank Atlantic. They are as crooked as BOA, if not moreso! Stay away from Florida Bank Atlantic.

Here is what happened:

Someone in FL owed me money and I asked them to deposit it in cash in my Bank Atlantic account and they agreed. This was in March of this year. I checked my acct via online banking and the funds showed up in there that evening. I went ahead and bought an airline ticket and some other stuff i needed online, using my bank atlantic debit card.

days later while checking my acct online i noticed seven $35 overdraft charges totaling $245. I called the bank and the drone on the other end of the line said that i didn't have the cash in my acct because a check had been deposited (by the person that owed me the money) and it hadn't cleared when i made my purchases. they sent me a scan of the check. hmmm.....there was no way to determine this from the summary of my acct the day i made all my purchases. by this time i was already out of town on my trip and i needed the money they sucked out in overdraft charges, but they would not reverse those charges no matter how much i made my case.

ok....so i told them to set the acct up so that any charges made with insufficient funds in the account would be denied. i had about $20 left in the acct and i figured i would just write off the loss.

i didn't go back to the acct until last week when i wanted to attach it to my paypal acct so that i could access the money i have there. i was able to get into my acct via netbanking but there was no actual bank acct showing once i was logged in. i called Florida Bank Atlantic and they said that in June a couple of automatic godaddy charges overdrew the account by $2 (despite the fact that i didn't want to allow any charges that couldn't be covered) and they applied a $35 over draft charge. then for the next 45 days they charged me $8 per day bringing the total to $397 at which point they shut down my acct and sold the debt (for a few pennies on the dollar, no doubt) to a company called PRS. They never notified me of any of this.

so, bank atlantic created a $397 asset by charging a phony debt to me and then they sold the "asset". now i have to deal with some douche-bag company named PRS to try to straighten this out so my credit rating isn't affected.

has anyone ever had this thing happen to them? how is a bank legally allowed to jack up a phony debt like this? do i have any legal recourse? is there any way i can get PRS, who has not contacted me yet (to my knowledge), to drop the whole thing?

[quakerboy]

1. They all have this. Theres a little clause making the "no overdraft" opt out less than perfect.

They exempt certain types of payments from the "no overdraft" opt out. I cant recall all the particulars, but I believe it includes "recurring payments" so any subscription type deals, and thus your godaddy charges.

As for the deposit/payment, you most likely got a bunch of small print when you opened the account that detailed waiting periods before certain types of deposits (cash, checks from their bank, checks from other banks, on weekends, holidays, etc).

Neither of these things is right. But they are detailed in the information we receive from the bank on opening account. And the way they do the accounting is certainty screwy. If a deposit is considered "held" it should be noted as such, and not included in what your online banking tells you you have available. And if you want to opt out of over drafts, you should be able to do so completely and without any "except for"s.

If you are going to deal with banks, the only way to do it is to have plenty of cash with them so as to avoid any potential hold time issues, to be aware of their rules about all such things, and to be as anal about record keeping as they are. A simple excel or open office spread sheet will do a simple job of this, is easy to use, calculates your totals and takes up virtually no room on your hard drive to store as many months or years of records as you care to.

[grasswire]

2. Bank of America just paid out $41 million dollars in a class action suit for this kind of...

....predatory fines.

I would advise the bank and/or PRS that I am part of a 150,000-member activist Internet community and I'm going to take the matter to these activists and to Twitter and Facebook if those charges aren't reversed.

Also tell them that Michael Moore is looking for new material for a movie and you are sending your documentation to him.

And advise them about the Bank of America settlement.

[Suich]

3. Wow...you got royally screwed!

I have no idea what you can do but I bet someone else does!

Nice to see you!

[Gato Moteado]

4. most people would just pay it and write it off.......

.....but i'm still living on a third world salary and they already stole money from me earlier this year, so i don't want to let them get away with it. i think we need to fight these criminals!

so, how the heck are you doing, Suich? Been a while since we've talked.

[sarcasmo]

5. Bankers the new Mafia

spread the word.