Boeing Employees Credit Union (BECU) is a credit union which is situated in Washington. It has roughly 19.6 billion dollars in assets. It is founded in the year 1935, headquartered at Tukwila, Washington United States with Benson Porter as CEO and Michael Sweeney as the chairman of board of directors.
The BECU charges about 25 dollars for a single transaction when the customer account is overdrawn. Transactions options which BECU offers to its customers and members are as follows.
- ACH payments
- Checks
- Online bill payment
- Debit card
BECU provides overdraft fee protection services to its members and also its customers, these services comes with a fee and also some problems, It also does not include available overdraft amounts in the balance provided by a teller, through telephone, ATM, or even in online banking. You can link eligible accounts such as your savings account, personal credit, money market, by doing so you can have an advantage of transferring available funds when the balance in your checking is less to cover an item, by doing this you can also have advantage that you wouldn’t have to pay Non sufficient funds fee.
A premium rate on first $500 Is Rewarded as a member advantage checking and saving accounts, with member advantage you will get better earnings on CD, IRA and money market accounts.
According to CNN the credit unions and the banks make money from overdraft fees, but nowadays you can always verify and check how much money you have in to your account by the online banking facilities, hence very few customers are over drafting their accounts, because of this some banks and credit unions are misleading their customers to pay maximum or undesired fee as a overdraft fee. Without proper adequate disclosure from the financial institution, customers may mislead about the advantages and disadvantages of the overdraft, However BECU always details its services in its website.
BECU customers and its members may of been mislead due to overdraft fee practices. Research suggest that many banks and credit unions impose overdraft fees in ATM withdrawals, checks and debit card balances.
Out of order transactions
Many consumers have complained that their credit union have processed their transactions are out of order and also charged multiple non sufficient funds on a single transaction so that the banks can make money by maximizing the overdraft fees.
However the consumer financial protection bureau is making rules and regulations for minimizing the mislead overdraft fee, but the future regulation would not be able to promise or help the consumers who have already been faced by undesired overdraft fees, as of 15th august 2010 the financial institutions have prohibited from charging the overdraft fee to the customers unless or until the customer has opted manually for the overdraft coverage program or overdraft protection.
NSF fee or returned item fee?
NSF stands for Non Sufficient Funds which indicates that payment cannot be made through check or debit card due to insufficient funds in account being drawn, overdraft fees are now only taken in the bank if the customer has opted for overdraft protection.
Alert about the undesired fees
Online banking may contribute to the unexpected fees and consumers should always keep in mind that the account balance information may not be always correct and needed to be taken care off, because online banking technology may not be always be synced to the account balance.
Multiple returned item fees
It is a charge which a bank makes against the customers account for a failed transaction. It may cost around $30 or more for a single failed transaction, but the consumers are reporting that banks are charging again and again for the same failed transaction.
Class action lawsuits and settlements for overdraft fee
Many lawsuits have been filed against the bank that the banks not only charged extra fees to their customers without their consent, but also created internal processes to increase the chances that the customers account would be overdrawn.
Lawyers recently filed a overdraft fee class action lawsuit against Sovereign Bank which is now owned by Banco Santander, because the bank was charging the overdraft fees and applying large transactions before smaller transactions so that maximum overdraft fees could be taken from the customers. Sovereign banks had collected millions of dollars just by unauthorized overdraft fee.
The bank overdraft fee attorneys at Shamis & Gentile, P.A. says its really doing what is right, when you are one who is mislead by the banks that’s an injustice to letting the banks to get away without any loss for them.
