First of all, when I went online to check my account balance on 7/24 there was no “-$135.00″ for Check 123, which means everything was just dandy. But, apparently, when someone cashes a check of yours it may not be posted for several days AND when it eventually does post it can show up earlier on the timeline, at the time the person cashing the check brought it to the bank. So when I checked my account on 7/27 there was a mysterious check, which, though it slipped into the timeline at 7/24, did not show up on my online banking account until 7/27. This means that everything I spent on and after 7/24 is now slapped with a–gasp–$35.00 overdraft fee. Yes, okay, this only happened because I stupidly forgot about a check that I had written out earlier that month, but, way to capitalize on my slip-up Bank of America. Is that customer service?
Furthermore, if you look closely you’ll notice that the payment subtractions are neatly ordered from highest to lowest amount, as opposed to the natural timeline in which they occured. This ensures that Bank of America can slap you with the maximum number of overdraft fees. For instance, if you have $500 on your account, and these four charges: $490, $11, $5, and $4, they can give you three overdraft charges if they charge them in that order—never mind whether that was the order in which you actually used your card. For example, say you bought something for $4, then $11, then $5, and then $490. That should only give you one overdraft fee, because you didn’t go into the negative until your last purchase. But if you made all those purchases in one day, “customer-friendly” Bank of America will neatly rearrange the payments to give you three overdraft fees. At $35.00 per fee, that’s a $105.00 slap in the face.
So, that’s how they screwed me. Yes, I screwed up first… but, still, is it fair? Is it even legal? It certainly isn’t good customer service. In the end, they hit me with $245.00 in overdraft fees for one weekend.
And, oh yea, when I went to check my account on 7/25 the Bank of America website was experiencing technical difficulties and I couldn’t see my pending items. The customer service lady later told me on the phone that I should have called and checked my balance over the phone because “you shouldn’t just expect the online banking system to work all the time.”
Laughing out loud. I usually can’t stand Chris… but this was alright. As a proud American citizen who was not born here, I really couldn’t care less if President Obama was born outside of the country. Wherever he was born, he still lived with his Grandparents in Hawaii and went to school there, then to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, then worked as a community organizer in Chicago and eventually became a state Senator in Illinois, etc… So either way, WHO CARES!?!? But, we should point out that there seems to be NO EVIDENCE that Barack Obama was NOT born in Hawaii (unless some sort of HUGE conspiracy was underway…) I typed in “Barack Obama birth certificate” on Google images and got this:
As you can see, that’s a whole bunch of hits leading to President Obama’s official birth certificate. It looks like this:
Yes… I suppose it could be photoshopped, but it has been verified by a number of sources… including the state of Hawaii. Yet the nonsense continues, here is CNN debunking the accusations. Oh, apparently Lou Dobbs didn’t get the message, even though they debunked it on his show a few nights before!!!
Come on Dobbs! Even O’Reilly wouldn’t believe this crap… back in 2008!!
Here is how Robert Gibbs reacted in the press briefing:
Sigh. Can we get back to important things? Maybe… I don’t know… healthcare?
If you haven’t seen these, here are some must-see Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert vs. Bill O’Reilly interviews. We’ll start out with the one where Bill talks about the “stoned slackers” who watch the Daily Show:
The New York Times published a piece yesterday about CNN’s recent woes as it has fallen behind MSNBC and Fox News in the cable news rankings. The piece suggests that CNN’s less-biased middle-of-the-road approach seems to be losing out to MSNBC and Fox’s model of opinion-infused content. The question seems to be, would CNN be more succesful if it sold the remaining pieces of its soul and joined the orgy of partisan programming that now fills the primetime slots at MSNBC and Fox?
I apologize for not posting in so long. The semester is winding down though, which means I will soon face the real world! And until I get a job (would you like to hire me?) I should have some time to blog!
This bloggingheads.tv clip focuses on a question I find fascinating. The question is “Did liberal opposition help or harm the Iraq war effort?” I think this is a critical question that the media has yet to address–and probably never will. I think you can’t deny that the Liberal push to get out of Iraq (2006 elections–remember?) did in fact put a lot of pressure on the Pentagon, Iraqi forces, and Iraq’s government, and signaled to them that US forces may in fact be leaving Iraq in the near future. Did this have a positive impact on our mission in Iraq? The anti-war movement was of course matched with the Bush administration’s refusal to pull out any troops, which, when taking into account the relative success of the “surge” (which, of course, may be temporary–but for now has stabilized Iraq) was not necessarily a bad thing. Could it be that the combination of extreme political pressure to get out, with an administration that refused to do so was exactly what was needed? I wonder how we will look back on this chapter of the Iraq War.
Fasten your seatbelts, I’m going to mention three completely seperate topics in one post. I start with a challenge to you all. For how long can you watch this clip of “The View” before you have to stop.
So my question to you is: Why is this on TV? I mean, Rush Limbaugh is an idiot but watching this blabber is pretty unbearable. Unless, of course, you interpret it as comedy.
Nick and Dave, you both made great comments on my “Simple Math” post, and therefore I will be giving you EACH a free IDTIK shirt! I’m doing this since there were only two comments and both of them were worthy. I don’t have time to respond right now but I will ASAP!
Hey all! I’m SO sorry about the lack of posts recently. I’m still adjusting a new school/internship/theatre/a cappella schedule… so things have been crazy. BUT, that’s no excuse for skipping out on posts and I apologize. I did spend some good time on this new video blog episode so I hope you enjoy it (especially my slideshow/video effort). This is more of a conversation starter than anything else, so I hope you all respond! These numbers continue to blow my mind…
So let me know what you think! Do you agree with the way in which the Government is approaching the financial crisis? Do you think they are spending too much or too little?
Sometimes, I feel like there is a lot of focus on how to solve this in the short term, even though the roots of this crisis might only be solved with a long term approach. But, I’m no economist and I think it’s tough for most of us to wrap our heads around a lot of these issues.
I’d like to hear what everyone else thinks–especially those of you that have studied business and economics!
YES, the T-Shirt contest is still alive! I PROMISE, I will be giving one out this saturday! So get the comments in!
Furthermore, if you look closely you’ll notice that the payment subtractions are neatly ordered from highest to lowest amount, as opposed to the natural timeline in which they occured. This ensures that Bank of America can slap you with the maximum number of overdraft fees. For instance, if you have $500 on your account, and these four charges: $490, $11, $5, and $4, they can give you three overdraft charges if they charge them in that order—never mind whether that was the order in which you actually used your card. For example, say you bought something for $4, then $11, then $5, and then $490. That should only give you one overdraft fee, because you didn’t go into the negative until your last purchase. But if you made all those purchases in one day, “customer-friendly” Bank of America will neatly rearrange the payments to give you three overdraft fees. At $35.00 per fee, that’s a $105.00 slap in the face.
Yes… I suppose it could be photoshopped, but it has been 
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