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Money orders and banking scams
freshmasterfresh
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Gather 'round, folks; it's time to share you banking, credit card, and general money-related horror stories.
I recently had someone offer to pay me with money order through ebay. I had been stuck with a someodd percentage fee when I had received money through a Western Union wire from my buddy in Australia, and I didn't want to deal with that again, so I declined. Do money orders incur fees when you cash them out?
Also, is it normal for a payment from a checking account to the credit line from the same bank to have a holding period? Electronic payments to other businesses seem to happen instantly, but my credit card payments through Bank of America take several days from start to finish. One time that little jewel of a policy gave them reason to steal 85 of my dollars. I think they purposefully have their system set up to generate more late fees and interest revenue.
I recently had someone offer to pay me with money order through ebay. I had been stuck with a someodd percentage fee when I had received money through a Western Union wire from my buddy in Australia, and I didn't want to deal with that again, so I declined. Do money orders incur fees when you cash them out?
Also, is it normal for a payment from a checking account to the credit line from the same bank to have a holding period? Electronic payments to other businesses seem to happen instantly, but my credit card payments through Bank of America take several days from start to finish. One time that little jewel of a policy gave them reason to steal 85 of my dollars. I think they purposefully have their system set up to generate more late fees and interest revenue.
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About 3 weeks ago, I place an order for something I'd need for an upcoming convention. When I found I could get something similar for much cheaper, I told the seller I was canceling my order (It was a regular online shop, not Ebay, for clarification).
I tried to pass the same message on to Paypal, but seeing as the "authorization for payment" was already through, they said there was nothing they could do on their end apparently. This was bad, because I already paid for the new item, so it wasn't long before Paypal tried to send the seller money, only to discover there was no such amount in my account.
So, I was hit with a returned check fee. 20 bucks in the hole. No big deal, right?
Well, Paypal's policy is that if they don't get the money the first time, they charge your account again to make sure it wasn't just hidden from them or something. Even after telling them the order was canceled, they responded "Oh, Don't worry. we'll still continue trying to get the money from your account." So that's another 20 dollars yanked from my account due to a returned check fee.
It wasn't until I gave them another response that they finally figured out "Oh...we're sorry. Try this."
So as of today, I have an open claim, and seeing as the Seller seems to have disappeared off the face of the Earth, I'll supposedly receive retribution on Friday.
Yes.
For a long time (and still might be the case), banks would process checks largest first. That way if there was an overdraft, a greater number of checks would bounce and they'd collect more fees. At least a few would process a couple day's worth of checks at the same time. If you made a cash deposit and a check went through on the same day, guess which one got processed first? That's how I payed over $500 for a pizza back in 2000.
This is also how I paid over $200 for some sandwiches from Subway. I got all my monies back though.
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Actually, I have USAA so banking isn't that bad, other than the fact that you have to send your deposit in the mail.
My bank recently tried to charge me $140 for using my own money and so far I've gotten $115 back. I'm still arguing about the other $35, but that's a whole branch's fault, not corporate fault thing so they say.
Whatever, if they try to ever really screw me over, there's at least another 5 banks in my area I can move to. I know they really don't care if I take my few hundred and leave, but sometimes you'll get a manager who doesn't want to look bad.
I've recently gotten myself out of all credit cards. I've had enough of that bull.
I actually work for a bank, and we pay items out largest to lowest now because : Customers bitched when their largest items (typically car notes, mortgages and Rent) bounced back leaving them in limbo with their car, house or apartment in jeopordy. And no I'm not gonna say which bank I work for
Oh and the reason deposits get held are : 1) there are alot of scams these days, Checks, Money Orders, Cashiers checks, and even government / payroll checks need to be verified against their drawing bank. 2) Customer relationship, i.e. if your account is in the shitter 50% of the time don't expect that 50K inheritance check to actually clear within the week.
for money orders the real trouble is it can take weeks for the bank to recognize a fake money order. they will then deduct money from your acct and crap. by that time the buyer is usually got your stuff and is long gone.
I don't know banks are a hassle I agree but shit was a lot worse when S&Ls were everywhere. Where I live, Blount county TN please come visit if you don't believe me other people need to see this, is over run with banks. We have more banks than we have all the combined fast food restaurants in the county. And more banks are coming, for some reason.
They just built a credit union two blocks from my house. Directly adjacent to that bank is site under construction. There's a sign out front that reads, "This site the future home of..." If you guessed bank, you win a dollar. In Hunter's Crossing there's a stretch of shopping area next to a walmart where there are no less than 5 banks in a row. Then there's banks directly across the street, granted its a highway, but there's still banks over there. Travel 4 blocks west and hey, two banks directly across from each other.
I have watched this conundrum for several years and I am still vexed by it.
Shogun Streams Vidya
They'll make you a loan you can't refuse.
(In this post I'm not really asking Nack these things, or yelling at him, I'm just saying banks in general)
I understand the first thing, it's good to get the big stuff out of the way first because it's probably the most important to pay. Though I hate multiple overdraft fees. You know I don't have money, yet you continue to charge me for more of my non-money. Take the first one, sure, but when I hear of people getting charged 4 or 5 fees in a single day it's a bit ridiculous. Fortunately I've heard that most people can get their money back and only get charged for 1 or so.
The second thing is: I get paid by my employer through a Bank of America check. I bank at Commerce. You guys are down the street from each other, yet it takes a business day to clear this check? If I had accounts at both I could log online and see in SECONDS what my balances are. Why can't you? In this day and age of electronic transmission, nothing but the smallest banks should take longer than a few minutes to clear.
It should not take that long to find fraudulent money orders or checks.
On the subject of clearing checks, banks really should separate that into a different column or show it differently in statements and online. If I deposit a check on the 15th, and it's not available until the 16th, don't tell me the money is there when I get home on the 15th. And when I check back on the 18th because I find out I got overdrawn, don't tell me the deposit was in my account on the 15th when clearly you charged me because the money WASN'T there on the 15th but was on the 16th. Show a blank line saying the check was deposited and then put the money later in another line when it CLEARS and I can actually spend it. I think this would help people everywhere.
That is, until the marketing firm mentioned "can you please verify your bank account number is _______"?
This was a little shocking. Come to find out, it's a scam where they pretend they are affiliates with your bank, and then charge you all sorts of crazy fees without your consent. I got a letter recently from some 3rd party stating that an employee of theirs who had access to bank records was selling this information to a data broker. I changed banks.
Can't be too careful.
--
Also, why can I cash a check at a bank but depositing it takes a few days? If the bank is going to "take the money back" if the check is fraudulent, then why can't they just do that whether or not I'm depositing or cashing the check? It takes 4 days for a check to clear at my bank, but in theory, I can cash a check, then deposit the cash, and it goes right through.
I remember when debit rewards cards, from banks, were first being released it took a while before the Post Office caught on to one legal scheme: buy a money order with your debit card, swiped as credit. You get (say) 1,000 rewards points for your new $1,000 money order, which is usually worth around $10. Now, deposit the money order into your bank account. You're out $1.50 for the money order fee, and up $10 for a cool $8.50 profit. A lot of people repeated this process many times and racked up large rewards balances.
Now, you can only pay for money orders and similar things using a card if it's swiped as debit, using your PIN, which doesn't get you any points. Note: I never did this, as it was fixed before I found out and, also, $8.50 probably isn't worth my time driving back and forth from the Post Office to the bank. Interesting, legal scam, though.
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If you cash a fraudulent check they'll pull the funds out of your checking account (assuming you have that much available).
My dad did the request, and waited until he got a confirmation letter in the mail because he doesn't use the internet for anything besides work. It came in one day, and read that his request to transfer $999,999.99 was denied, but that $512,642.46 was allowed (some number around that high and that random). My dad freaked out because he had maybe a couple of hundred on the card as he pays off everything at the end of the month.
So he called them up, and they couldn't fix it for some reason, but they did send him a check for that amount, and he paid it off as soon as he got it. They let him keep the flyer miles for his trouble, so he's got a lot of tickets right now, but everything still scared him, and he never wants to do any kind of balance transfer again.
On top of all that they still wanted to charge him something like $75 for the balance transfer, but his complaints got him out of it.
Security deposits are usually a month's rent, right when you move in, on top of your first month's rent. 700dollars in this case. At the end of your lease, if your house isn't fucked up, you get your deposit back.
I was renting through Coldwell Banker. They're pretty epic in Ohio, every single house I see going up for sale has a bigass Coldwell logo on the top of the sign. Anyway, I got my 700 dollars back at the end of last year, let that shit marinate on top of a speaker for two weeks or so, because I have bad spending habits, and I can't spend what's not in my bank account, yeah?
So I put this check in my roomate's account, to pay rent, it clears, probably because as someone said earlier, I'm the man and have a decent relationship with my bank. I signed it over, and just used his account number, this is an odd way to pay rent, but it's how we roll. A week later I check my statement online and I'm in the hole 700 dollars. It took me fucking forever to realize what had happened, because when I called my bank, they didn't know what the 700 dollar charge was for, and the very last thing on my mind was that Coldwell had written me a shitty check.
So I had negative money for a week and a half. There's broke, and then there's too-poor-to-eat broke. Broken, if you will.
Coldwell finally ended up wiring me 971 dollars, due to all the fees and shit that Chase put on my account.
Chase is usually pretty money, don't get my wrong, Coldwell fucked up.
In theory my ass, I've been doing that for months now. About 2 years back I gave up on banks completely. Luckily in Omaha we have damn near every major and minor (midwestern) bank in the country, so whomever my employer banks through I just cash that bitch at their bank. Seems in the past 2-3 years or more, every single bank has a 5-20 dollar service fee to cash it.
Bullshit. You know it's good! It says Omaha Fucking World Goddamn Herald on it. Pretty sure they won't fuck you, seeing as they give you massive amounts of business daily.
So I've been endorsing my checks over to my girlfriend to cash at US Bank (the world heralds) to avoid the "service charge" and then we deposit it in a different US Bank location on the way home.
Also, if I make a charge on Saturday, and then overdraw on Monday, Saturday's overdraft fee doesn't fucking count dickshits.
My PayPal account is attached to a free account that is always at a zero balance with no overdraft and no chequing so PayPal *can't* fuck me.
猿も木から落ちる
Helping people is not as profitable as reaming them up the ass.
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Very, very true. And quite unfortunate for people as a whole.
Sorry about the delay in responding arc, I agree that in this day and age with the technology we have, checks should clear near friggen instantly. Well it could, and you can thank the Feds for keeping that roadstop in. When we receive Bank B's check at Bank A we actually have to send it to an internal processing station then
a) Local Federal Reserve > Bank B's Internal Processing
-or-
b) Local Federal Reserve > Another Regions Fed R (their are I believe 13?) > Bank B's Internal Processing.
Route B can suck if the originating bank has a limited amount of Internal Processing Sites, sometimes a check can find itself in 2-3 or more Fed R before it gets to it's destination, and every transition takes one business day.
Whereas if Walmart takes a check from Bank B they can scan it and submit it through Check 21 (another topic perhaps) and know within 15-30 seconds whether the check is good or not, also that will come out of your account pretty fast as it skips all the physical travel and arrives electronically at your banks processing center.
I'm not sure how Commerce processes deposits but I know that we print the available date on the deposit receipt. Also the ATM will tell you that "deposits subject to verification holds." and holds arn't all about fraud, a check can become invalid if the person forgets to endorse it, if a stop is placed (i.e. check was lost, employee was fired), if the account was closed for whatever reason.
also of note, and this should be of no surprise, Banks need to make money, keeping track of all those transactions takes lots of overhead, and money doesn't grow on trees, unless your the government of course.
Okay, so it's not exactly a scam by a bank, but it's scam by manipulating transactions nonetheless.
That really is a thing of beauty.
0431-6094-6446-7088
I had had some phone issues with Sprint when I signed up. They displayed on their website a red and black RAZR, but when I recieved my phone, it was red and silver. I called the outsourced call center, and they apologized (far to much) for the mistake, and set another phone to me, telling me to RMA the first phone once the second arrived, which I did.
Well, the second phone was the same color, and I learned that they didn't actually have the color they showed online. So I went ahead and ordered a Treo.
Well, I had the option of simply returning this unopened RAZR to sprint, but, since I had already paid for it, and it WAS unopened, I figured I'd toss it up on ebay. I set the buy it now price at $225, and started the bidding somewhere around $150-175
Well, I checked back after a couple hours, and some one had already hit buy it now. She had registered just the day before, and had no feedback.
So, I sent an email to her email address, telling her that because of the VT shooting (this was the next day) my campus was working with odd hours and it would take an extra day or two for me to mail it out. I did this to wait for her paypal payment to clear, which took longer than usual.
So, I shipped it out with delivery confirmation (I hadn't charged her for that, but I figured better safe than sorry. I got confirmation that it arrived, I had my money, and all was well. Until I got a message from my folks saying that a woman had called and left a message saying that she had recieved a phone fromme that she never bought. She claimed that some one had stolen her credit card recently, and had been buying her things with it, and she wanted to return the phone and get her money back.
Now, maybe it was wrong of me not to get back in touch with her, but the story just didn't add up (who the hell steals a credit card and then buys things for the owner?) She had the chance to respond to my email (the email address, just like the ebay account itself were her name) and if she had told me then about all of this back then, it could have been dealt with beforehand. Also, if she was able to get my phone number, that poked a hole in the idea that she had nothing to do with the whole thing, as the contact number I always use is my cellphone.
More than anything, though, I really didn't want to deal with the argument over who had to swallow the shipping costs, paypal costs, and ebay costs. Had she offered to pay for that stuff in the message, I would have called her back right away, but I got the impression from the message that she would be insisting that I eat the costs, because she would claim no responsibility. I decided that if this was REALLY the result of credit card theft, she could work it out with her credit card company. Unfortunately for me, she did.
I got a message from paypal saying that they had frozen money in my account, because they had recieved a complaint that an item purchased from me had never arrived. I responded immediately saying that I had a voicemail which proved it had, and offering to send them a copy of it. They NEVER took me up on that. Unfortunately I had gotten rid of the tracking number, since the phone call had erased any question, so I could not give it to them. I did give them the ENTIRE story, though.
For about a month and a half this continued with no word from paypal. The thing that really go to me, though, is that this had been initiated not by her, but by her credit card, whom she had informed not of a card theft, but that the item had never arrived. Even if she HAD been the victim here, I had lost all sympathy for her, because, for whatever reason, she was now commtinig credit card fraud, and to my detriment.
Then I got the fateful email from Paypal that they had ruled in her favor, and they took my money away. This resulted in an EXTREMELY pissed off email on my behalf about how Paypal did nothing to protect their sellers as they claim to (I have a merchant account from back when I used to sell t-shirts) and that they had refused to accept evidence that I had offered them. I said that they were protecting a known scammer (by this point she DID have other feedback, all of it negative and talking about he initiating these sorts of things multiple times.) The response I got back said simply that because I didn't have a tracking number, I wasn't covered under their policy. At this point I called the postal service, but they said that they don't keep those things on file. I called MY credit card (which I'd used to pay for shipping) but they told me that there was a 45 dollar fee for pulling up an individual reciept (ain't that a load of bullshit?) After this I tore my room apart until FINALLY I found the tracking number. I plugged it in online, and it didn't just state that the package arrived, it stated that it was signed for. Check AND mate, right?
Wrong. About a week and a half after I had sent the tracking number off to paypal, and they had reopened the case, I got another email from them, saying that, once again, they had ruled in their favor.
The anger that I had felt the first time was nothing at all compared to what I launched into this time. How DARE they deny me again? CLEARLY I was in the right, and I finally had not just any evidence to prove it, but the specific piece of evidence that they had claimed was the only thing standing between me and and winning. I wrote back an even nastier email, which is as follows:
Well, the key there appeared to be demanding a supervisor. I got an email from the escalations department, and very quickly the chargeback was reversed. I hate having to resort to threats, but sometimes only the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
That's some pretty messed up stuff though. Paypal really doesn't care much for it's customers when it involves getting them money. What's pissing me off about this whole thing is that I know when I get my refund, they're likely going to use this to take care of the negative balance they forced onto my Paypal account rather than the negative balance brought onto my checking account.
I know but I think you have to be a customer for a certain amount of time. My girlfriend can do it with her account but I can't yet.
That's odd. Does the deposit@home page say that, or are you just not getting the button that takes you to the actual deposit site? If you don't have the exact browser version it's looking for, you'll get the first page, but no link. This happened to me on Firefox.
I don't see how they would restrict it by age of the account. They just opened it up to Mac users, so it's not like they are trying to prevent people from using it.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Yeah, all the banks around here have insane cashing fees. If I can't direct deposit, I used to cash it at No Frills (who used to do it for free) or La Esmeralda.
Here in New Zealand, Oz and Europe, checks are a rarity (and often frowned upon), and everyone gets paid (and pays) by electronic transaction. Be it cards or internet banking.
It's only like that for big amounts or transactions though for some reason.
I never asked for this!
Just yesterday I registered with PayPal because, well, I'm over 18 now, I've been for a while, and I can spend my own money however I damn well please. And PayPal is huge on eBay and stuffs, as far as I can tell. Now I already knew that PayPal isn't flowers and perfume 100% of the time, but combine that with potential checking account messiness and there could be a problem. See, my parents put me in charge of paying my own college tuition. Not with my own money, but with theirs--for this purpose, my dad transferred a very large sum to my checking account. (My dad is sort of the financial guru of the family; he earns the most money and was even taking online college courses on top of his full-time job to become a stock broker a few years ago. But being a flight technician (UH-60 Blackhawks) is too badass a job to leave, ever.) So, only $X00 out of $X,000 in my checking account actually belongs to me. If something were to run unsmoothly and I had fees charged to that account, well, it's definitely not impossible that those fees would cut into my tuition money. Which is technically my dad's. Did I mention that my dad gets pissed really easily? Also, despite "wanting" a job all summer, I never got one, so barring touching my savings account (which I try to avoid), I'd have to way to replace any of those lost funds.
Of course, the only reason I'm sharing this info is because I'd like some suggestions on how to safely go about purchasing things over eBay and stuff, before I dive headfirst into something I have little experience with. Yes, please suggest away.
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Gee, that will show them. Now they have to make another account!
Luckily it was only $10, but still.
Fuck PayPal.
1. Check the feedback comments. Feedback as high as possible is great, but still be careful. Even if they have 100% positive, it's possible those positive comments are faked for scamming and will generally become obvious if majority of the feedback is from screen names that are jumbled letters (i.e: Myjljfsjjsj), or if a majority of them are no longer registered with eBay. So the two things you want to look for are:
-High Feedback score
-High amount of feedback left.
At least 25 or 30 positive feedback votes minimum is a good bet as long as the people leaving feedback are actual users.
2. Before purchasing anything, make sure you're able to have communication with the seller if it's for something over 20 bucks, in case you want to cancel your order (My story as an example of this mess). Once you finalize the payment authorization through Paypal, it can't be reversed unless you open a claim.
3. Throughly read the item description. This is pretty much an ebay basic like number 1. You don't want to bid on something and find out you were bidding on the item's box or on a guidebook on how to buy an item cheap rather than an actual item.
4. Bookmark an exchange rate calculator. This'll come in handy for calculating shipping from other countries seeing as eBay only calculates it if the seller sets a definite amount.
After a few AIM conversations with the guy didn't get anywhere, I went to the mess age board staff and they told him to pay the hell up or he'd be banned. A few other message members had ordered things from this guy around the same time I did, and they were also having problems. Even after he got banned from that message board (as well as Something Awful when somebody tipped off their sales forum mod about his scamming) nobody had their money back, and people were madder than hell. I sent a letter to his house addressed to his parents, which didn't do any good. He messaged me on AIM telling me he'd intercepted it and thrown it out. I was fucking furious at this point.
Then, came an excellent breaking point in the case. Somebody discovered this guy's dad was an attorney, and they had the address and phone number to his law office. I fired off an email to the guy's dad and my refund (along with a profuse apology for his son's behavior) arrived were mailed to me almost immediately.
the one or 2 times i made a mistake (with new accounts) I got the charges reversed.
it's not that hard to know the rules and follow them
also stop floating near 0 dollars and spending more money than you have, retards
also how is this G&T material
Internet?
I don't know, looking out for online scams and basic scam advice seems pretty important from a technology standpoint seeing as a lot of problems people have with money have been stemming from the internet as of late.