Mary has suffered greatly from excessive overdraft fees. As a freelance administrative assistant, she has many responsibilities that don’t leave her much time to watch her bank account. On countless occasions, Mary has deposited checks thinking that the amounts would be available immediately – as the bank tellers assured the deposits would “go in right away”. Unfortunately, Mary has overdrafted her account on numerous occasions because her bank sometimes put a hold on her deposits, triggering a $25 fee each time.

In one instance, Mary was charged $400 in overdraft fees resulting from a delayed deposit. These fees were later reversed after her bank acknowledged that she had not been at fault. Mary has also had trouble with restaurants and gas stations putting holds for “double or triple” the amounts of her purchases, leading to more overdrafts even though she had enough in her account to cover the actual transaction amount.

Mary estimates that she has incurred overdraft fees at least 50 times in situations over the past year where unfair banking policies have led her to overdraft – 80% of these overdrafts were for purchase amounts much less than $25. If she could, Mary would prefer to be declined by retailers in the event that her debit transactions would cause an overdraft. After more than $1250 in overdraft fees, Mary is tired of haggling with her bank.