not paranoid.
For instance. If you have debits and credits on the same day, the debits will be processed first. So if you had 20 quid coming in to an account with a fiver in it, and you took out 6 quid, you'd be a quid overdrawn, and voila! along come the charges.
Larger debits are processed first to maximise the chances of you going overdrawn. If you had three direct debits going out of an account with 100 quid in it. One for 90 quid, one for 20 and one for 15. The 90 would come out first, leaving the account with 10 quid. In that instance you'd be charged twice for bouncing the two smaller ones. If the 15, then the 20 went out first, you'd only be charged for bouncing the 90 quid one.
There's no way any of that is by accident, and smells to me like it's been given some serious thought.
(dchurch bah, Thu 10 Feb 2011, 19:42, 2 replies)

^this^
in spades.
( blaireau69 , the Cumbrian Travis Bickle., Thu 10 Feb 2011, 22:45, closed)

AbsoLUTEly.
I paid a £300 cheque into my account (totally in the black). Two days later and voila - the money is in my account, and the available balance has increased accordingly. Happy day. I moved the funds out of that account and into my ISA.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I was charged interest. Eh? What?

I emailed the bank. The interest was for the "loan" they had given me, because the funds had not yet cleared.

This is clearly fraudulent behaviour - to trick you into thinking the funds are available to you with no penalty. There was no indication that they hadn't cleared.

What do you think of that little trick? The bank's name may be an anagram of HBSC.
(Stiltzkin, Fri 11 Feb 2011, 15:36, closed)