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No consumer likes overdraft fees. Overdraft fees are often unexpected, expensive, and in some cases undeserved. What’s more, they can wreak financial havoc on households living on a low-income.
But the larger issue is not the fees themselves. It’s the lack of transparency surrounding them and the widespread consumer distrust that results...
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“Wow, the consumer knows about that?”
This was essentially how a banker responded when I told him the story of a woman I interviewed for the US Financial Diaries study. The participant – we’ll call her Jenna – was charged four $32 overdraft fees in the same day ($128 total, if you’re counting). Jenna explained to me that if her bank had processed her transactions in the order she had made them, there would only have been one charge. Instead, the bank posted her largest purchase first, which was enough to take her account balance below $0...