Arthritis and Banks are both causes of Pain

As I sit here listening to the rain pouring down outside and hitting something with a loud insistent drip drop DRIP DROP!, I am feeling the pain. I have never felt so icky and not been sick. As the old folks say, the ‘Arthur’ is messing with my bones and ‘Ben’ and ‘Ty’ and ‘Mo” are my only friends. I have discovered that Tylenol will take the edge off the arthritis pain but it’s the Ben Gay and the extra little Motrin that will keep me pain free long enough to get some work done.

Arthritis is one of those things that only ‘old’ people get. Funny how 56 was so OLD when I was much younger and now that I AM 56, my brain doesn’t want to come to terms with my aching joints and muscles! My mother is getting a chuckle over all of this and my sister commented that I now walk like our grandmother did! Mamaw fell a few times in her life time as I have and I understand her fear of falling!

I read a lot and came across some articles about the Consumer Checking Account Fairness Act, which brings up another big pain! Have you ever found yourself waiting to get access to your money after you deposit a check? Banks commonly “hold” a deposited check for several days before crediting the money to your account. You could deposit a big check on Friday (even direct deposit), write a check later that same day, and have your check bounce because the funds from your deposit aren’t made available to you until Tuesday (for a local check) or much later (for a non-local check).

A federal law called Check 21 which went into effect in October of 2004, helps banks, savings and loans, and credit unions to process the checks you write faster, but it doesn’t require banks to shorten those inconvenient check holds. Banks don’t even have to count weekends toward the number of days a check is held, even though they clear checks on the weekends. So who exactly reaps the benefits from Check 21? Not necessarily you nor I, the average Joe banking consumer. The new law does not require banks to process deposited checks any more quickly than they do now. Thus, consumers did gain fast access to cash or the ability to pay bills in a timely manner. just yet.

Just what is this Check 21? Check 21 is sweeping federal law that takes away your ability to get back your original paper checks. Under this law, consumers are more likely to bounce checks and may find themselves paying higher bank fees. The complicated law gives some rights, but those rights depend on a variety of factors, including how the merchant and the bank decide to process your check.

It's frustrating to me when I get paid by direct deposit only from out of state banks. I do contract work and they pay me electronically. The money is supposed to be in my account on Thursday. I will check and it says it there but the funds are not accessible to me for 3 more days. Banks do handsprings to speed up the check-clearing and funds-transfer process on their side, but then treat their customers as if the bank has to wait for the horse drawn stagecoach to get there with the money.

I once had a bank tell me it was going to put a three-day hold on a cashier's check drawn on that very same bank. Another time that stands out in my memory was when we sold our house in Tupelo. The realtor wrote us a check on the exact same bank we were using and when we went in to deposit the check at a branch that we had used for nearly 20 years, we had to prove who we were! Plus they called the real estate agent that had issued the check to us! In the mean time, the mortgage company was waiting on their money and even though we ‘had it’ we didn’t have it because the bank would not release it until the prerequisite 5 business days had passed and they didn’t count the weekend.

Banks are a mystery to me and a necessary evil. They assume that everyone is kiting checks and bouncing and defaulting. But holding on to the consumer’s money in this electronic day and age of swiping a plastic debit card and it is immediately out of your account and into another is ridiculous. It’s just another way of keeping the consumers money for a little while longer and racking up those fees.

Too bad Tylenol and Motrin won’t clear that pain up!