Regions Bank, a large Regional Bank out of Birmingham, Alabama, has adopted a policy of allowing students (or anyone else) to use their Visa Check Card (debit card) even though they do not have funds to cover the transaction.

This is done so that they can reap a $31.00 overdraft fee per transaction. My daughter is a student at the University of Memphis and overdrew her account by 28 cents, for which she was charged $31.00. She then used it again for a couple of dollars and was charged another $31.00. By the time I was able to catch the problem and let her know that she had no money and was being raped by the bank, she had accumulated yet another overdraft fee of $31.00 for a grand toatal of $93.00 to cover less than $20 in overdraft amounts. I raised cain with the bank about allowing ignorant college kids to overdraw their accounts, but they basically shrugged their shoulders.

Steve Pullis

CreditCard.org is still collecting Lemon Award Nominations for Bad Banking. Send them to Problems@CreditCard.org . Award recipients will be publicized October 31, 2006 .

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