What you should do if you are charged an overdraft fee by mistake
I have explained an overdraft fee several thousand times, and I would guess a quarter of those were fees that should never have been charged.
Not fraud, and usually not malice. Ordinary things: a transaction posting in an order nobody could have predicted, a deposit that was available and then was not, a hold from a petrol station for far more than the fuel cost.
Those are worth challenging and they are frequently reversed.
Work out what actually happened first
Before you call anyone, get the transaction history for the three days around the fee. Not the statement. The detailed history with posting dates and times, which you can see in online banking or ask a branch to print.
You are looking for three things.
The order things posted. Banks process transactions in an order set by their own policy, and if larger items post before smaller ones, a single large payment can push several small ones into overdraft and generate a fee on each. This practice has been curtailed in various ways but it has not disappeared.
Holds. A hotel, a car hire firm or a petrol pump will authorise an amount well above the actual charge, sometimes a hundred dollars for a forty dollar tank. That hold reduces your available balance for days. Your money is there. You cannot use it.
Deposit availability. A cheque you paid in is not necessarily available immediately, and the bank's funds availability policy governs when it becomes usable. A deposit showing in your balance is not the same as a deposit you can spend.
The call
Ring the bank, or better, go into a branch if you have one nearby. A person looking at a screen in front of you has more room to act than a voice in a call centre.
Be calm and be specific. Give the date, the amount of the fee, and the transaction you believe caused it. Say plainly what you think went wrong.
Then ask for the fee to be refunded. Ask directly. Do not hint.
Reasons that work, in my experience: it is your first overdraft in a long time, you have held the account for years, the fee was caused by a hold rather than a real charge, the deposit was made before the transaction and you believed it was available, or it was a bank error.
Reasons that do not work: arguing that the fee is unfair in general. It may well be, and the person in front of you cannot do anything about the fee schedule.
If the first person says no, ask politely for a supervisor or the branch manager. The authority to waive is often held one level up, and that is a matter of policy rather than obstruction.
Getting it in writing
If a refund is agreed, get the amount and the date it will appear, and write down the name of the person who agreed it.
Then check. A promised credit that does not arrive is common, and it is far easier to chase within a week than within a month.
If they refuse and you believe the bank made an error rather than applying a policy you dislike, put it in writing. A short letter stating the facts and what you want. Banks treat written complaints differently because they get logged.
Beyond that, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau takes complaints online, and your state banking regulator takes them for state chartered institutions. Both route the complaint to a team that answers formally.
Stopping the next one
Turn off overdraft coverage for debit card purchases if you do not want it. This is a choice you are allowed to make, and if it is off, the card is declined instead of a fee being charged. A declined card at a till is embarrassing for thirty seconds. A thirty-five dollar fee is not.
Link a savings account for overdraft protection. The transfer fee, where there is one, is usually a fraction of the overdraft fee.
Set a low balance alert. Most banks will text you when the balance drops below an amount you choose, and this single setting prevents more fees than anything else I ever recommended.
And know your own bank's cut off time for same day deposits. It is often mid afternoon, not the end of the business day, and people lose a day without realising it.
If you are being charged these regularly, the account itself may be wrong for you. Accounts exist that do not permit overdrafts at all. There is no shame in that choice and it is a great deal cheaper.
