Insufficient Funds Charge + PayPal website issues
I randomly logged into my online banking today to find we are almost $96 overdrawn, when we should have had $21 available, with over $1,500 being deposited on Wednesday at midnight.
I clicked the overdrawn account to realize that PayPal had taken the payment for Erin’s credit card from our checking account instead of the bill pay account as I had scheduled. I am obsessive when it comes to finances, and when adding a payment account through the PayPal platform, I triple-checked that I was adding our bill pay account, where I had transferred the $88 payment, to ensure it was available!
This is not the first, or even second time that PayPal had taken a payment from the wrong account, causing us to go overdrawn and get hit with ISF fees. I removed all payment accounts after I took out a consolidation loan to pay off this high-interest debt to avoid this happening a third time.
As Erin had run up a small balance on her PayPal Mastercard, I used PayPal’s system to log into my bank and allow for easy linking of accounts. I made sure to uncheck our checking account, leaving the bill pay account checked, despite this, our checking account got added, leading to our current predicament.
Despite an overall income of over $5,000 per month, we are constantly running out of money due to our loans, medical insurance premium, and credit card bills due to having extensive out-of-pocket medical expenses, on top of paying almost $700 insurance premiums, that’s after the ACA premium credit.
Erin says she prefers credit unions, as they are better than banks, but are they? our credit union, Meritrust is eager to charge us a $29 ISF fee. I know these fees are automated, but you’d think maybe they would flag it for review, and if a human reviews it, they’d see that the exact payment amount was transferred with the same PayPal name to another account and simply transfer the money from the bill pay to the checking account, or wait a day, for the account holder to realize what happened and transfer the funds back, instead of charging an already broke account holder an Insufficient Funds fee.
In my opinion, an ISF fee is a way to punish those who don’t have enough money to live on, going overdrawn when an unexpected bill gets taken out of their account, or even charges disappearing, then reappearing later, to make their lives a little harder than it already is. These ISF fees snowball, as each time an ISF fee is charged, the account holder has less and less money to live on each paycheck, eventually crippling the account holder to the point where they can no longer pay for the essentials.
I don’t believe for one moment that credit unions are any more ethical than banks, maybe it’s time for me to start withdrawing all my cash as soon as it’s deposited and stash it in my mattress? Obviously, I am being facetious, but I am sick and tired of working my ass off when every red cent is taken by basic necessities and never-ending debt payments, we’re supposed to work to live, not the other way around!