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Under very, very limited circumstances, maybe. Like you need gas to get to work now, get paid tomorrow, and have nothing in your account? Yeah, maybe, but that's an expensive tank of gas for someone that's that short on cash.
OTOH, I can't count the number of times where my former bank processed my paycheck last--even though it went in first--and then hit me with overdraft fees for buying groceries, gas, paying bills, etc. (This was National City Bank; they ended up losing a class action lawsuit about it, but they still made more money from their theft than they had to pay back out.)
IMO, there should be zero overdraft fees; if the money isn't in your account, the charge is declined. All of this shit should be done in real-time, instead of waiting for a merchant to post at the end of the day. This is the twenty-fucking-second century, and it's not that goddamn hard.
Upsetting to hear banks don't get any better a century from now. Good luck to you future man.
What's funny is that it looked odd when I read it, but I just quickly brushed it off as a "well you don't see it written often."
Blud it's the twenty-first century
I think the real issue is that dudes living in 2124 and overdraft fees are still around.
It seems Lemmy is also still around... so, a little bit of good made it?
You can disable overdraft "protection" at many banks. I disabled it on my account when Commerce Bank got eaten by TD, and they transferred years of withdrawls then deposits to "balance" my account between systems and I was handed a potential few-thousand-dollar overdraft pile. Told them to kiss the fattest part of my ass and disable overdraft immediately.
Ive had overdraft off on my account since i opened it. However theres been a few things that still are allowed. My truck note is one of them, and state/federal/irs stuff im told would likely be allowed too. I once double paid my truck not on accident, and that was a fun trip to the bank to put a stop payment in.
IIRC part of the problem is that merchants don't necessarily post charges to your account immediately. They place a hold on funds, but it's not necessarily charged. That's especially true for buying gas, where the amount you are going to spend isn't known until after you're done filling your tank. The way around that is to have to pre-pay for gas.
Or even better, make banks immediately start treating any negative balance as a credit. There can be a low limit, but enforce a low interest rate. For all that banks have done to us, I feel like this is literally the least they can do—and shit, they’d still turn more profit.
This is actually not a terrible idea. Though interest rates in general need to be capped on lines of credit of all varieties. The fact that 45% interest on a credit card is not being brought up on usury charges is insane.