Check charges quickly reach $693

D ear Fixer: I have a $700 problem. I bounced a check -- yep, I did, and I take responsibility for it.

My ComEd bill posted electronically before our paycheck did, so when my preschool tuition check was presented, the funds were not there.

I am totally responsible for that and know I need to be more careful in my checkbook keeping. ...

Here's what happened: All my debit purchases from the weekend had gone through and were marked as pending.

I checked my bank balance on Monday morning and saw that the ComEd bill had posted and my balance was negative $15.

Then the preschool check was cleared by the bank.

Instead of charging me an overdraft fee for that one check, the bank charged me 21 overdraft fees for all the weekend purchases at $33 apiece, totaling $693.

They "restructured" (their word) what they paid out first as a "service to the customer," to ensure bigger and seemingly more important bills are paid (their explanation).

I argue that they first need to pay the charges that were incurred first, and that is predatory to "restructure" what they pay out to the advantage of the bank, to the tune of almost $700.

Cara Peckys, Aurora

Dear Cara: It does seem a bit unfair to get $693 in overdraft fees, especially considering some of those weekend purchases were pretty small, like $9.22 for food at Burger King or $7.35 for a treat at Starbucks.

The Fixer asked First American Bank president John Ward about it, and he said you apparently were caught in a "perfect storm" of it being a holiday weekend, banking being automated and you being slightly over the limit.

This occurred over the Columbus Day weekend.

Your bank, like most banks, didn't actually take the money out of your account for those weekend purchases as they occurred -- even though online, it looked like each transaction went through on each day, Ward said.

So, essentially everything was stacking up until the computer kicked in the next business day.

The computer assumes certain bills are higher priority -- such as a credit card bill, for example -- and automatically pays those first, Ward said.

Unfortunately for you, there were lots of little things left after that.

But after the Fixer intervened, First American wound up waiving all of the fees.

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