Are You In Charge Of Your Bank Account ??

I thought I was until today. We have an automatic payment going to the movie rental store each month for unlimited movies. It's taken out in advance. Now that we have this super-dupper cable system with 10,000 movies I decided to go to the bank and stop the draft so it won't taken out on the 10th of December for the next month. I couldn't believe the clerk when she told me that I could "not make that change" . Said I would "have to go to the video store and make the change". I drove back there, filled out the paper, and then they told me it would be 6-12 days for the change to be made which most likely will mean another draft for a month I'm not going to use.

Since when can't we make changes to our Bank Account?? I do wonder what the clerk would have said if I said I wanted to withdraw all funds and close the account? Odd rules we have these days. By the way -- Wachovia -- which we've banked with for years. Can you make such a change at your bank??


Your turn :)

I got away from the big chain banks, I just go with the local yokel bank. No problems as of yet.

Since you basically are purchasing a service from the movie rental store, the bank need to know that you are no longer receiving the service before it will stop the payments. That's why you need to go through the rental place and cancel the service. Makes sense if you think about it.

Because if you are still using the service, canceling the payment wouldn't be kosher, would it? It would be like buying something at Macy's, bringing it home and then canceling the check and keeping the item. If you want your money back, you return the item, you don't just tell the bank you want your money back. If you want to cancel an automatic payment, you need to prove you're not using the service any more. I don't know of any service where you set up automatic payments that would be any different. Cancellations always go through the supplier, not the bank.

Let me guess, Naomi. You are doing business with a big national chain video store instead of a locally owned one.

My experience is that the locally owned store here has more titles, lower rental rates, and better service.

I have absolutely no control over my bank account.

Just ask my wife.

Dave, When you set up to make automatic payments, you, the consumer, do not personally set up for the payments to be taken from your bank account - the vendor does. And you have to give them authorization to do so by giving them your account information. Then they set it up with your bank using your authorization. Since they set it up, they need to cancel it when you give them authorization to cancel. You can't cancel it on your own. This is what Naomi is running into with her bank.

The consumer simply gives authorization to the vendor to contact the bank to set up the automated service. Since they are the ones that set it up, they are the only ones that have authorization to cancel it. So you cancel the service with the vendor, and they cancel the payment authorization with your bank. It works the same if you want to make automatic payments with a credit card. You give the vendor the authorization, then they set it up. It's just the way it works.

Nope, my wife takes care of it. I handed over my check book to my wife over 43 years ago. I had to write a check about 8 or 9 months after giving her the check book and the check bounced. It came back incorrect signature. Needless to say I took it to the bank and there were some red faced people there when I left. A letter of apology was sent to the business to whom I wrote the check and to me. Banks don't even check the signature any more. The wife wrote a check at the grocery store last year and didn't even sign it and it was honored like it had a signature. We don't let anyone take a draft on our account as too many friends have done this and find out that some make more than one draw a month. Guess we are just old fashioned. :D

Depends on how it is set up - There are basically two ways to do electronic transactions and they have their pros and cons.

In most cases, I have my electronic payments set up through my credit union. In those cases, I simply tell the credit union where to transfer the money to and how much. This gives me control over the timing and amounts, but helps keep me from missing payments - for instance, I can direct my credit union to send $100 to my Visa bill every month on the 10th. I don't have to worry about being late or forgetting. If I need to send a little more or a little less, I just log in to the credit union website and change the payment for that month. Total control and I can cancel or change any of those payments at any time. In the case of my credit union, this is a free service and the best thing since sliced bread - I used to write 20 or 30 checks a month and now I only write two or three

In other cases, like my mortgage, I basically give my lender permission to come into my account and "take" a certain amount of money each month. If I wanted to cancel that type of transaction, I would need to go through my mortgage lender, since we have an agreement that they can do that. In general, these types of arrangements are only appropriate in a few situations - either they are giving you a special rate for doing this (I think I save 1/4% on my mortgage this way), if the amount changes from month to month and you feel very confortable with them (like my insurance broker), or if they won't do business with you any other way (use caution - see below). Many credit card companies will give you the option of having them take money out of your account, but often they will only take their minimum payment. It's usually better to use method one with credit cards, so you can control how much gets sent.

In nearly every case, I do my electronic banking using the top method, but have a couple instances where I use method 2.

A word of caution - One time I got one of those compact discs that gave me 2,000 "free" hours on AOL. In order to sign up to use the free hours, they required me to give a credit card number. Once they had that information, AOL made it nearly impossible to me to quit the service, and they billed me for three or four months before I finally got my credit union involved - they interceded on my behalf. AOL eventually got sued for that practice and lost, but there are plenty of other companies that still use that type of scam.