By: Susan Sperling
Let me start by stating that it's partly my fault; after all, my family has been telling me to switch banks for years, and I haven't listened. Maybe I get a buzz from bad service, because six years after Scotiabank held funds on my pay after telling me they wouldn't - and consequently bouncing my rent - I found myself standing in line, paycheque in one hand, obscenely large stack of bills in the other, and a naïve hope in my heart that I could use one to pay the other.
No such luck, as it turns out. Silly me. It all began innocently enough:
Me (showing a $200 cheque from my benefits plan, the exact amount I owed my boss for a loan made the previous week): I'd like to start by cashing this.
Teller: This isn't your branch, so I'll have to hold funds for five business days.
Me (surprised that there is still something in banking called a branch - it seems so 1990s): Okay, no problem, I'll do it in the machine. I have Cashback.
Teller: Not according to my computer.
Back up a minute. What's Cashback, you may ask. For those of you who deal with a different financial institution, Cashback is Scotiabank's term for not holding funds on the first $1000 (in my case) deposited into a bank machine. It's a term I've come to know well and cherish. It's meant that I've been able to pay for child care, food and transportation the same day I get paid. It is, as Martha Stewart says, a good thing.
The week before, when I got the $200 loan from my boss, she wrote me a cheque, I deposited it, and got the $200 cash from the nice machine, even though I was deeply into overdraft. So I had Cashback then. What happened in the intervening days to sully my no-hold reputation with the big red financial machine? What financial crime did I commit? Did I owe some huge sum of money that I didn't know about?
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Little things mean a lot when you live close to your credit limit - like most of us |
Well yes, actually, if you consider $13 to be a huge some of money and paying a bill five - yup, 5 - days late a major financial crime.
It seems that this Cashback feature is tied to my VISA card, from the same red bank, and, after many increasingly angry and frustrating phone calls (call your branch, call VISA customer service, call your branch again) I discovered that my bank, the same one that I've remained ridiculously loyal to for so many years, automatically removes Cashback privileges as soon as a customer's VISA card is considered to be in arrears. And apparently arrears is when your account is 30 days overdue. Sort of.
Here's how I got into arrears. I got a statement on October 23, stating that my minimum payment of $113 was due on November 18. There was no overdue amount showing; in fact, there was a credit of $431 for a payment that I had made in early October. So far so good, right?
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If I'd put my paycheque into the bank machine, it would have disappeared into the abyss for five working days |
On October 27, four days after the statement was dated, I made a $100 payment in order to clear up a little space on my card - I live very close to my credit limit - for a weekend cross-border shopping excursion with the women in my family. Then I hit a bit of a financial crunch (the shopping was great) and missed the November 18 payment date.
On November 23, after years of paying on time, usually the minimum balance (Holy Interest Rates, Batman!) but often more, I committed the crime of paying $113 to VISA, five days past the due date. Since I'd paid the $100 on October 27, I felt that the extra $100 was a nice bonus for VISA, but they weren't in an appreciative mood. Apparently they decided that the October 27 $100 was my minimum payment, and it was short by $13. And apparently, your account goes into the purgatory of arrears - remember, kids, that's 30 days overdue - when you reach 30 days past your statement date, not 30 days past the due date, as common sense would lead you to believe.
But then, we in Ontario have already learned that we shouldn't always trust common sense.
And so, even though I only owed $13, and even though I paid it a mere five days past the due date, the credit card gods deemed me a bad risk and sent me into arrears. And you know where that leads, right? Like all naughty children, I had my privileges taken away. No dessert for me, which would be fine if it had been chocolate pudding that was withheld.
Instead it was a necessary and important banking service - the ability to deposit money into my bank account and actually get money back - that was taken away. And nobody bothered to tell me. Had I not had my spouse's scholarship cheque and overdue tuition invoice to deal with at the teller's window, I would have deposited my paycheque into the bank machine, where it would have disappeared into the abyss for five working days. No money for child care, groceries, gas, rent.
And they didn't even send a note home from the principal's office letting my mother know that I was in trouble.
One of these days, I swear, I'm going to switch to another bank.
Susan Sperling is a Consulting Editor with Straight Goods who lives in the city formerly known as North York in the megacity of Toronto.
Straight Goods has submitted this article to Scotiabank's complaints department and we're anxious to share any reply with our readers.
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