That is essentially what Bank of America did to me today. I woke up to two overdraft fees. Odd, especially because I was not near a zero balance, let alone a negative one. I own up to my overdrafts, but I’ll be damned if I am going to pay for overdrafts that never happened.

I tell my husband to get up, we need to go to the bank. He asks me if I can just call. After some banter back and forth, I give up and call. I get a man on the phone who insists that if I kept a registry I wouldn’t overdraft (mind you, I keep track of my bank account via Quicken, multiple times a day. I’m kind of fanatic about it.) and it’s obviously my fault and that I can’t see what they can see, so I can’t see where I *might have* overdrafted.

Wait, back up. Might have? I might have overdrafted, so the bank too seventy of my dollars because I might have overdrafted? I handed the phone to my husband, whilst continuing to rant in the background. I was pissed. He wound up talking to the guy, getting the same story (in addition to being told to find out what anyplace is authorizing the card for… who tells you that information?) and hanging up. We went to the bank.

On the way to the bank out of my mouth comes “well, you might die today, so let me kill you and collect the insurance money.” He looks at me. I look at him. Well, isn’t that what the bank did? We might have overdrafted, so they took the money anyway. He asks me to keep my voice down in the bank. I offer to keep quiet all together.

We get to the bank, and Beverly, who we have worked with before, takes us back and fixes this in a matter of moments. She explains why it took the overdrafts (the computer saw them, probably due to a restaurant running/authorizing the card for more than it should have to account for a tip [many places do this, but the restaurant in question had to run it in excess of 200% of the bill to cause this mess] and while it didn’t clear for that amount, they issued the overdrafts based on the pending amount… which is fucked up in it’s own right.) and refunded them on the spot. Problem solved, until next time I guess.

So lesson learned: be careful using your debit card anyplace that secures a larger amount than the cost.