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Pop Quiz: If you
pay your electric bill ($165.00), your gas bill ($32.00), your
mortgage ($1100.00), your cable bill ($35.00), and your gym
membership ($20.00) all on the same day, but you only have $1250 in
your account, how many checks will bounce?
Well, if you have
a credit union, the answer might be one, your mortgage payment
because most credit unions will try to clear as many checks as they
can. But, if you have a bank, you may be paying fees for four bounced
checks. That's because many banks process checks in descending order.
Which means the big checks get paid first.
Now, that could be
a good thing, because you don't want a late mortgage payment. Or, it
could be a bad thing, because now you are looking at approximately
$100 is NSF fees. Which would you prefer?
Well, that was a
rhetorical question because it doesn't matter what the check writer
prefers. Most bank literature states the bank can process checks in
the order they prefer.
One New Mexico
lawyer doesn't think this is a fair practice and is attempting to
file a class action suit against First Security Bank. There is a
similar suit pending against Norwest Bank New Mexico and a class
action case pending against NationsBank. In the case of First
Security Bank, the bank processes checks from largest to smallest,
but if there is a series of NSF checks, an employee personally
decides how the checks will be processed and fees
charged.
The main issue is
the account holders believe they've not been alerted to the practice
and what it means. Besides believing that their customers should not
write checks if they don't have the funds in the account, most banks
feel that larger checks are the more important ones and a
company-wide national policy to process large checks first allows
them to process all checks uniformly, thus reducing
costs.
The attorney has
five clients involved in the First Security case and he will be
seeking class action status for the Norwest suit later in the
year.
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