Evil Bank Issues

[Iggy]

I work for a bank. And I deal with what happened to Juniper on a daily basis. For one, $5,000 is a lot of money to take a loss on. Where I work (at a smaller local bank) any check over $2,000 is considered for a hold. (Your bank just said it was "pending", we say it is put on hold... same outcome) There are other kinds of holds, but when a bank puts a hold on your check, it is basically to make sure it clears. We purposefully delay the availability of that check.
Where I work, we have to give you a form when we do this. It tells you when the check will be available, and the reason we are holding it. But we call the other bank DAILY to find out if the check has cleared. And when it clears the other bank, we release the hold. Usually after a couple days the hold is released... but the hold we put on is for 11 business days. That is 2 weeks and 1 day for those of you not familiar with business days. It could be longer if there is a holiday thrown in there, since holidays aren't business days.

Also, we deposit your credits BEFORE we debit your account for anything. For example... you have $5 in your account Friday morning. Lots of things come through overdrawing you before noon that day. You can come in at 5:30pm (or until we close, we stay on the same business day) with a deposit covering all those items. At the end of the business day, we rearrange everything so the deposit posts before anything comes through to overdraw your account... and you don't get ANY fees. Whereas some banks would charge you the fees, because technically you were spending money you didn't have in the bank.

Juniper might not think that $5,000 isn't a lot of money, if you don't have that much in your account than the bank would take a loss if the check came back. And banks don't like losses.

As for the scam? We get people in all the time with checks around that amount, that ARE A SCAM. They don't know that the check is counterfeit. You knew the check was good, but the teller probably didn't know you from Adam, how are they supposed to know that you are one of the people that gets checks like those sometimes?? That you are one of the smart people that knows if they get a check in the mail, for something they don't know anything about, that the check isn't real? They don't. They could look at your account history... but then you would be jumping down their throat wondering what was taking so long.

I could go on for days about this... but I don't think that is wise. I'm sorry you had a bad experience with your bank. They should have explained the check wouldn't be available when you made the deposit. We do. But as far as what happened, it happens at all banks. Fraud is on the rise. We have to try to protect our customers and ourselves. If that check had come back for whatever reason, and believe me, checks get returned ALL THE TIME, you would have been in deep doo doo. That is why they wanted to make sure the check cleared. At least that is how we do it. You might think that if it is a check it is automatically good, but it can be a real check, of a US bank, And still get returned. Like I said... it happens ALL the time. Maybe not to you, but you have to realize that the bank doesn't neccessarily know that that particular check is a good check. We have to research it, and wait for it to clear.

Bottom line on checks. They are a PIECE OF PAPER. There is no guarantee that it is going to be paid. It is a written agreement between the check writer and the payee that money is to be paid, but it isn't cash. We have to verify that that piece of paper, that written agreement, you just put in the bank will be honored. Basically you want the bank to give you cash for a piece of paper. And they won't always do that.

Hopefully you find a bank that will better explain things. But what happened at your bank... it could happen at any bank. Oh, and credit unions? They are NOT banks. They are CREDIT UNIONS. And are not subject to the same rules as banks. Banks are much more regulated.

Oh, I almost forgot... as far as you having a credit card with an available balance higher than the check you deposited... if that were the case at MY bank, we would see that right away and know we might not have to put a hold on the check. At least, we would see that if you had it tied to that account for overdraft protection. And we don't charge for overdraft protection on a credit card... just if you use another account. And the fee is much smaller then the overdraft fee... the overdraft fee for going negative is $30 per item, while the fee to do the overdraft transfer from the account is only $8 per day. You only get charged for interest accrued on the credit card.