Ok, we do live in an electronic age, do we not? What makes me absolutely crazy is the way banks treat the average guy/gal. You know who you are. The only have $20 left, if lucky, in your account when the next pay goes in with it. Only to be used in a week. We have to depend on the banks to cash our cheques. Not every one does direct deposit. Great if they did. So we wait what, 5,6 even 7 BUSINESS days before we can see any of our hard earned money. Why? I have money in my account, it takes the push of a couple buttons to see that. I take some from an ATM, and voila, it shows as gone. So why does it take so long for some one else to push a button and see that my employer does indeed have the money, and release it? Not one single person has ever explained this to my satisfaction. Too many people in these institutions just aren’t given any real information. So please don’t give the poor bank clerk a hard time. Now, the real icing on the cake happened last week. Because I pay some bills on the phone, and didn’t have the money in my account, I made the decision to put cash in an envelope and deposit it in an ATM. Don’t ever do that!!! It still takes 7 business days to put the deposit in my account!!!!! I mean, how long does it take to verify cash? You open an envelope with a cheque. Ok, part of me understands, it takes some time to clear the cheque. But cash???!!!
How ST%#*D do you have to be to verify cash? So it is obviously not about clearing or verifying anything. It just means that untill you have a large balance, or investments, the average citizen means absolute zero!
Thanks for listening
—Just plain pissed
This article appears in Dec 17-23, 2009.
Banks suck. That’s all there is to it. They use our money to turn a profit for themselves, all the while charging us for the “privilege” of their “services”. I hate banks and all the hassle/bullshit that comes along with them. They turned record profits for years, paying HUGE bonuses to their Presidents/CEOs etc and then when the shit hits the fan, they get fucking bailouts from the government. Fuck them sideways with a red hot fire poker. Twice.
holy hell, never experienced this before…
I put in a cheque (after hours) and withdraw and it’s all automatically updated.
sounds like you need to switch banks and fast.
I don’t understand !?!?!?
I put my check into an ATM & my cash is readily available…this works not only at the banks I deal with…but at my Credit Union as well.
7 days wait ????? What are you talking about ?
A lot of people have a low withdrawal limit for “unverified funds” so unless you have a checque from the same bank that you use, you’ll have to wait a while for your cash. It’s nothing new. But it IS annoying.
I’m curious, what the hell is “ST%#*D”? Stupid? What’s with the censoring?
Most ATMs are actually out-sourced by other companies, not operated by the branch staff (even though they have the bank logo right on there)…so it takes a few days for the ATM company to process their end of it, then send the okay to the bank that there was indeed money in the envelope you deposited.
Secondly, people do try to scam banks daily and they rate you individually on your credit risk as to whether they’ll allow you to have access to your cash immediately, and if so, how much. A certain bank that starts with P used to give me $1000 immediately from ATMs, now where I work, another big local bank, only allows me $200!! You’d think because I work there that there would be slight more trust that I am not going to rip them off, but guess not. At least 99% of employers now use direct deposit so most of us aren’t stuck like that, but I remember those days, and the OP’s frustration…
I am pretty sure you can apply to have instant cash back , go in and talk to a CSR at the bank.
It’s probably that ‘If Not For You’ person, who thinks “sucks” is a bad word.
On the talk of the cash;
Banks actually outsource the ABM Deposits to other companies. The travel from the bank, to the depot of the carrier, then to the company for processing takes, on average, 3 days.
On the talk of cheques;
It’s the same damn process.
kthxbi
I can’t explain about the cash. That should show up as there the next business day. But, I can partly explain about the cheques.
When you deposit a cheque in your account into an ATM, that night brinks (or whoever) opens up the machine and takes out all the money anyone put in there all day. The next morning they take it to a processing centre. At this centre all the envelopes get opened and the cash and cheques get posted to your account, one item at a time. This is the bank checking to see if what you said you put in the machine is what you actually put in the machine. This is why sometimes it shows that there is money there before you can actually get access to it.
Then those cheques go somewhere else where they are encoded, thats those little numbers at the bottom of the cheque that show how much the cheque is worth, this is also done by hand. Then they are sorted by financial institution, this is done in the middle of the night, the day after the physical deposit was removed from the ATM. (monday through friday)
Once the cheques are sorted they are returned to the issuing bank, which will happen early the next morning (not the morning after you put your money in the bank, the morning after that). if your company uses BMO and you use CIBC the cheque will have to be sent in a truck off to BMO before the money is taken from your employer’s account. The bank isn’t going to give you money until they know where the money is coming from.
Someone at Bank A cant look at the balance of an account at Bank B.
I know this is frustrating and slow, but they are doing things with imaging now that iwll make if faster in the future, but i promise that right now the bank is working every minute from when your cheque gets on their desk to when it shows up in your account to move your money to you.
If you want things to appear in your account and be usable faster, I have three suggestions:
1. avoid the tellers, this adds at least one, and sometimes three days to processing time, and they are doing exactly the same thing as the machine, when it comes to deposits
2. get overdraft forgiveness; you can get accounts that will credit you the amount of the cheque while its in limbo.
3. get an account at the same bank as your employer, this is a good idea because cheques written from customer to customer of the same bank can be cleared more quickly.
Some people have holds on their accounts based on certain things. Myself for example, I had an account from a certain bank since I was like 5, so they just assume they can trust me and I can deposit and withdraw money right away. I switched to a different bank for a bit because I was sick of the first bank. The 2nd bank held everything i deposited for 5-7 days because I was new to them. Even a certified cheque from my first bank got held for a week. So, I ended up going back to the first bank because this 2nd bank was even worse for numerous reasons.
You must have a hold on your account, just ask someone at your bank why you have a hold…but I don’t think there’s not much you can do about holds is there?
Ivypants, you’re fully correct. Just a number of points however. The teller has to provide the same timeline as the ATM, that’s a CPA requirement. The only teller service that may take longer are bill payments (and that really depends on how the bills are processed, sent by clearing or electronic). Also, be wary of overdraft in any form. There’s a charge to use it plus daily interest at 21% APR. It can be a very expensive habit, especially if you’re concerned about your service fees at the end of the month. As to the same bank as your employer: be careful. Most banks charge a fee to cash cheques if you don’t hold a chequing account with them.
If you ever have cash, go to the teller. Most banks now have evening hours, and even open Saturday/Sunday openings. There’s no excuse. If you hold your money in such a high regard, then you must taking your banking very seriously. It’s either that, or you can deal with the real criminals: pay day advance stores.
Wow, banks hate you. They must love me….I have never been charged a fee of any kind at my Big5 bank, I have instant check approval and can withdraw money immediately upon depositing a check. You should work on improving your relations with your branch.
In HRM most banks have evening hours, but the Scotiabank in the town I lived in in the valley closes at 3pm. THREE FUCKING PM.
LOL I love it.
There’s one bank that’s pretty shitty about cash back, but I have to say TD, Scotiabank and RBC were super great about it — I had to request cash back for my pay cheque from TD a few years ago and they upped the amount to $2000 to cover my bi weekly deposits. Scotiabank gave me cash back without asking (they said I could up the limit if I had to, but I don’t need more than my current limit) and RBC always gave me a high cash back limit with my account without asking.
I ended up closing my account at a certain bank named after a city that’s not TD because after 18 months of having an account with them, never being overdrawn, never putting in a bad cheque and cashing my government pay cheque every two weeks they refused to give me any cash back at all (all I wanted to do is cash my gov’t pay cheque on a wednesday when I got it, and they closed early on wednesdays). I put in some cash into the machine once and had to call the branch to track it because that was all the cash I had. They gave me a stern “warning” that they would not be doing that again. I don’t need that shit from a bank when I can go to scotiabank and get instant cash back upon opening up an account (and a super low student banking rate :))
To confirm previous posts, if you want access to deposited funds, you need to ask the bank for it. If they won’t give it to you, there’s a good reason (i.e. you’ve burned them before with bad cheques or empty envelopes). Believe me, I work closely to a department that deals with chargebacks and empty envelopes and it’s unreal what people try to pull. Sure banks make too much money, but they’re not gonna let you fuck them over no matter how insignificant you may think it is.
It’s true! RBC called me three times for a 5 cent interest payment I apparently owed them after I closed out my line of credit.
I DIDN’T owe them the 5 cents, and it took another 2 months to work THAT out (the teller hadn’t credited my final interest payment and I had 5 cents of interest on an apparent 15 dollar outstanding balance that I had actually paid off). But still, it probably cost them more to call me over that 5 cents (a total of three times! They actually said “when will you be visiting the branch to make that payment, miss?”) than the actual 5 cents!
RBC gets screwed over by NO ONE! haha
RBC will never ever get my business because they are idiots. When I was married the other half had a mortgage, LOC and CC with them, When it was time to renew the mortgage we said we were going to shop around and if we get a better rate, would they match it. They told us we wouldn’t find one. Well we went to my bank (green in colour). Not only did they give us a better mortgage rate but if we banked with them they’d give a better rate on both the LOC and CC. We got this in writing and went to RBC to see if they would match. They didn’t and that afternoon we switched.
Bro Tim, your not the only one to have a hard time with Royal Bank. I’ve had Car loans, a truck loan, a motor cycle loan…all paid off, no missed payments. I had a mortgage with them, when married for over 10 years never a problem. When I divorced I made sure the bills got paid even when the ex refused to pay her part & I kept records for when we finally got into court 22 months later, I was hurting it took all I could do to meet all the bills we had together & have a place to live & eat.
When my divorce went through…Then I got another mortgage on my own & a vehicle paid on them for 5 years, did a balloon payment each of the 5 years & when I went into renew, they didn’t want to do it !
Last year I had a great deal offered by a family friend, the car was $5000 I asked if I could get a loan & in a mix up the loan officer arranged for me to borrow $25,000 ,they called me the same day & said i was approved for $25,000 …I said I don’t want 25 grand I only want 5 grand …2 days later they called & said they couldn’t lend it to me !
WTF over !??!
I have until 2012 & my mortgage will be paid off.
I’ve already closed my savings ,cancelled my credit card & put just enough to cover my by-weekly mortgage in. I’m done with those guy’s… you get no appreciation at all for being a good or at least an on time customer !
well ummmmm cough cough HSBC . Best bank i ever dealt with – i deposit a fair sum bi weekly and only had a 500 cash back and had to wait – which isn’t all that bad – usually a couple days – but these guys actually offered a low interest LOC and everything else the other banks i had wouldn’t .My cash back is 1500 – makes it easier to pay shit with cash like the landlord . Anyways pays to shop around like the bitchers say the green isn’t bad – the blue and yellow blow huge ass !!!!
More— I’d hate to say it, but the bank wasn’t at fault for your mortgage situation. A divorce essentially resets your credit score with both Equifax and TransUnion. In fact, the best way to look at it is to treat it like a Bankruptcy, with the exception that it doesn’t stay on your credit report permanently, unless you make a habit (there is a defined limit, but I really don’t know what that is, I never ran into it all that much) of it. So, the banks have to use those bureaus to rate your credit score (as well as maintain an internal score) and they would probably both rate you at sub 600, meaning any type of credit, even high rate credit cards are tough to get, not to mention the fact that your credit rating doesn’t actively update. It updates every quarter. So in your case your rating might have been based on your pre-marriage credit score, then when you went to renew, it was based on your after divorce credit situation. To the loan issue, your initial approval was most likely due to the fact there was a car involved (that being security) and it’s a way they can guarantee your loan. Then they pulled your credit report… and they probably either A) saw the divorce or B) saw something else that “red-flags” you, either a collection, or missed installment credit payments. I’d seriously suggest you call up Equifax or TransUnion. They’ll provide you a written credit report, and you’ll see where you stand. Caveat: there’s a small fee, it’s 15-20 bucks for the report and it’s by mail. Still a good idea though.
What a load of rubbish…Sweden clears cheques within 2 hours.
It’s the age of computers, not 1950’s style bank rip-offs.
Google it.
Equifax and TransUnion reports are free, Dr. F. You only have to pay if you access it online, and that feature isn’t available in NS. I think you have to pay to get your score, but your report is free, at least.
Either equifax or transunion has an office on Spring Garden or Coburg (coburg, I think) and I’m pretty sure you can walk in and get your report right away. It’s best to get both though because different creditors might use either or.
Wow OP you and I share a VERY similar situation. I deposited a bunch of cash to do Xmas shopping with, but oh no, not allowed because its cash. wait 7 business days. Ill be doing my x-mas shopping apparently next week. Thanks Royal Ass. Why did I deposit it? I needed it there to cover my rent, the rest was supposed to be Xmas shopping, so because of Royal Fuck Up I’m in overdraft and without rents and a few meager gifts I wanted to get for family. Merry X-mas douche bags.
Yeah I wasn’t sure on that bit PK… I’m used to paying for it with my professional fees. Heh.
Actually frosty, if you read the actual legal act, they’re not required to provide that level of service: http://www.bis.org/cpss/paysys/SwedenComp.…
I’m sure out of the 120+ banks operating in Sweden, not every bank clears cheques in 2 hours. Google it fuckface.
“legal act”.. is that a technical term FeverFuckface?
RBSUCK screwed me really bad one year…I asked for my limite to be raised on my chequing account because I was travelling to London, Uk. They accidently increased the limit on my savings instead, so I could only withdraw 20 pounds per day. wooo. We were only there for 4 days and I had to get my mom to wire me money from NS, which I got on the last day. RB didn’t even apologize. Oh, not to mention, my “hotel” wouldn’t let me use their phone (incase someone tried to call to make a reservation, also none of the room phones were hooked up) to call my bank/parents so I had to walk down the street to the payphone and call collect. Don’t ever stay at the Kensington West and don’t use banks. Lawllll.
“”I’m sure out of the 120+ banks operating in Sweden, not every bank clears cheques in 2 hours.””
Of course you are correct. There are several that clear them even faster…