How the Heck do you UN-Bounce a Check?!

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crowbb

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So I mail out my mortgage check a few days before the end of February. A few days later, the check bounces. It was my own fault because I forgot my auto insurance is paid automatically online and didn't leave enough in my checking to cover both. I say fine, eat the $36 fee, and call my mortgage company to pay by phone. This costs another $12 fee plus they tell me once their system realizes the check bounced it will be another $30. Fine this is my fault so whatever.

This is where the rage comes in....

It's now March 10. I log in to pay my utility bills and see my account is negative. At first I think someone got into my account and cleaned it out. Then I notice. a freakin' week after bouncing the mortgage check...THEY PAID IT. So what...the check un-bounced? The hell? They didn't refund the fee AND they took another full mortgage payment out. This causes my college loan check to also bounce and another $36 fee. A third check would have bounced tomorrow probably but I noticed this and moved some funds from another account.

My rage builds more when I rush to the bank since they are closing soon and explain all this and demand my fees back. They tell me they see NO bounced checks on my account and have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm looking at the darned things on my screen as I type this. I didn't have my printout with me so now I get to go back tomorrow and say what the hell are these then? The scan of the actual check even has returned for insufficient funds printed right on it. I don't know what they are looking at but my account clearly shows them taking the cash out. Then putting it back after insufficient funds. Then taking it out again a 2nd time a week later. On top of that I see they mislabeled a check number (they added 400 to it for no apparent reason) which isn't really that much of an issue (Though I guess it will be when 5 years or so from now I try to use the real check with that number...) but just serves to increase my rage that they are so incompetent.

Plus even if I get them to remove the fees then I get to have the "fun" of dealing with my mortgage company and trying to get them to credit the 2nd payment they got this month for next month. Because I don't have enough cash lying around to just pay my mortgage twice.

If I have enough overdraft protection that they cover the check shouldn't it be instantaneous? Could it possibly take a week? I don't know. I don't often bounce checks. I plan to ask these questions tomorrow if I can get anything out of my mouth other than "HULK SMASH BANK MAN!"
 
It sounds like your mortgage company resent the check as an EFT to try and get the funds, adding some larger number to the check number so that it would go through as the EFT.

They may have some agreement that when you present them a check and it doesn't go through, you're allowing them the right to EFT out of your account for the check amount and any associated bounce fees they charge along with the check amount.

You mention overdraft protection, though if you really had it on your account, none of this would have happened. You may want to talk with your bank and see about that on your account, if it's there or not.
 
Thing is when I called the mortgage company after the first bounce they said they had no record of a check bouncing at all and "was I sure".

I only mention overdraft because I couldn't think of any other reason how this could happen. Oh well I will find out tomorrow I suppose.
 
my credit union takes money outof the normal accounts if there is not enough money in the checking account.. i would of bounced a few but they saved me :)
 
This is how banks make ungodly amounts of money off of fees. Being hit 2,3,8 times with a bounced check fee is absurd.

I would go in tomorrow and talk to your branch manager. Do not do this over the phone. If they aren't there, come back when they are. They'll likely waive *some* of the fees, but not all of them.
 
I can't bounce a check. They jay pay it and charge me the overdraft fee if there's not enough in the overdraft acct. I'd say it's stupid, but, it's saved me enough times that it's worth paying the overdraft fees most of the time. Only happens once in a blue moon that I actually go over though.
 
Damn auto-payments. Anything that I have automatic payments on I use a credit card, that way I don't forget to write it out of my checking account, that way I avoid bouncing checks. Then, at the end of the month, I can pay my credit card and get cash back on a bill I would have had to pay anyway.
 
I used to over draft my account constantly when i was younger, but for the past 3 years or so I've had the PNC virtual wallet and it does all the work for me, and even factors in automatic payments into my monthly budget. It's saved me a ton of money on overdrafts because i don't pay enough attention to my account as i should
 
At my company we have a check scanner on site so that instead of a lockbox or us physically taking checks to the bank, we scan them in our office and a 3rd party pays us and then collects the money. By default, if a check that we receive bounces they will automatically try to redeposit it the next day or so and this all takes place before we're aware.. as you can imagine we've had some supremely pissed off customers (the majority of which are small mom and pop operations rather than corporations who can eat the cost).

I imagine something similar happened in your case. There's not much we (can) do because it is the responsibility of the person writing the check to be sure that there is enough in the bank to back it. Technically, in most cases it is illegal to bounce a check but because it's a cash cow to just charge fees instead, it is common practice to handle things with NSF fees.

When you have a paper trail for everything, check with your financial institution and see if they'll reverse/waive all or some of the fees. My last bank (Key) would waive one per year. I switched banks last year and I went in on a Thursday to close and the teller assured me she would close the account the next morning. Turns out I forgot to switch my student loan ACH and it hit that next day and they charged me a NSF even though the account should have been closed and any transaction should have been between me and loan holder I had to pay the GD fee. It's shitty but the bottom line is that it's on you to keep things in line and the vultures will ALWAYS descend if you leave yourself open to it.

I'm switching banks again this month and not looking forward to coordinating all the auto-pays again.
 
[quote name='crowbb']Thing is when I called the mortgage company after the first bounce they said they had no record of a check bouncing at all and "was I sure".

I only mention overdraft because I couldn't think of any other reason how this could happen. Oh well I will find out tomorrow I suppose.[/QUOTE]

When a check bounces the company the check is written to has the ability to resubmit the check. It has nothing to do with the bank and they owe you nothing back for the fees. If anything the mortgage company would be the one that owes you for the fees since you made other arrangements to pay the bill. Doubt they will do anything tho.

All in all if you go in with an attitude, don't expect results from the bank when they did nothing to cause this.
 
Turns out this is exactly what happened.

These derned kids and their internet superhighways with the gigs and the bytes and the ipods changed everything. In my day when a check bounced, they voided it then and there. It couldn't be resubmitted because it was physically destroyed. We didn't have any e-checks or intertrons or whachamajiggies. We were just glad to have a bank, even if we had to trudge there through 20 miles of rusty nail covered street while wearing nothing our feet but wet paper towels. AND WE LIKED IT! Ohh...sorry....blacked out there for a second. But yeah, I don't exactly make a practice of bouncing checks so I had no clue you could resubmit these days, but it makes sense since you don't have to walk in and hand them a physical check anymore. Anyway the manager was nice and he did cancel out one of the fees which he didn't have to do. I called the mortgage company and they had already applied the extra payment towards next month. That is fine with me as I can cover my bills this month, and now I don't have to pay my mortgage next month. So it all worked out in the end.

I also had him tie my savings account to my checking, something I should have done a long time ago since the savings had plenty to cover all this stuff. Lesson learned.

I still hate that I'm stuck with that autopaying car insurance, but I'll just have to remember it's there. Taking that option did save me a significant amount over just paying them outright on a credit card.

[quote name='Afflicted']When a check bounces the company the check is written to has the ability to resubmit the check. It has nothing to do with the bank and they owe you nothing back for the fees. If anything the mortgage company would be the one that owes you for the fees since you made other arrangements to pay the bill. Doubt they will do anything tho.

All in all if you go in with an attitude, don't expect results from the bank when they did nothing to cause this.[/QUOTE]
 
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