Sharon Credit Union

Overdraft Protection Services
- bstratton - Monday, September 12, 2011 - 4:50 PM

Be very careful with this institution when using their OPS services. Their practices are very beneficial for the institution but incredibly expensive to the consumer. When charging OPS fees ($30.00 per transaction), they use the following practices: 1) They will not recognize any deposits held for "clearance". Up to two full days. Even though the deposit check has cleared according to the issuing bank, they will not apply the funds to your account until their standard hold period. If you are close to a negative balance prior to the deposit, they will charge OPS fees on every single transaction until the end of the hold period. A cup of coffe paid with your debit card could cost you and extra $30! 2) They remove funds associated with "pending" transactions even though the institution isuing the pending transaction has not actually withdrawn the funds. This can lead to doubling or tripling your fees on the associated transactions.

Example: Saturday you have $200.00 in your account but there are 3 pending transactions: 1 each for $25.00. You then go out and spend $150.00 for dinner thinking you have a buffer of $50 or so until you get to the bank on Monday to make a deposit to create a better buffer. Pending transactions do not show on your on-line electronic statement. They are reflected on your available balance when they are communicated to your bank. The funds for the pending transactions have not been withdrawn by the institution issuing the pending transaction but Sharon Credit Union removes them from your "available" balance and charges you an OPS fee for the $150 (pending) transaction ($30). Then when the funds are actually transferred to the pending institution they charge you another $30 fee for each of the three $25 previously pending transactions. Once the first OPS fee is charged, you are down another $30 which burns the funds for one $25 pending transaction, etc. When you check your account on line Monday morning you are now out $120 simply because they remove the funds for pending transactions effectively twice. Once while pending (they remove them from your "available" balance) Then when the funds are actually withdrawn. Both situations qualify for OPS fees. Without this practice, even if you didn't get to the bank before the pending transactions were cleared, there would be only 1 OPS fee because the account never actually went negative until the last pending $25 transaction clears and the funds are actually removed from your account. And the $150 dinner was a pending transaction, too! Funds are actually still there.

This is the stuff that gets class action suits filed against banks.