[roystonvassey]

Long back when I worked in my first job at a large private bank, I remember being in a meeting where they spoke about overdraft fees + late fees + interest on these + god knows what else and the lady, our systems counterpart, looked at all of us and said 'We better plan a trip to Ganges to atone for all this and we might need to go ever year' (it's a common saying in India, as Ganges is supposed to wash away one's sins)

It's been 16 years since I worked there but I still remember this vividly. Modern banking has to be one of the biggest scams legally running and once you go below the prime segments, it's basically just exploiting the poorest and weakest to make some of the easiest money you can.

[pinkfairy10]

Your comment seems false given private banks commonly don’t charge overdraft fees, or late fees, or interest charges.

[stevenicr]

around my neck of the woods the most common banks, like bank of america, regions, fifth third - afaik - all charge over draft fees.

not sure that late fees or interest fee apply, unless you consider things like paying BAM late on a mortgage payment - surely has a late fee.. perhaps if you have one of those account like. free checking so long as your balance stays above 1500 or/and you use your debit card 15 times a month to push fee onto retailers.. if these are not met you could say it'd be like a late fee.

I've seen news stories that have discussed discovery of some banks structuring debits to an account with the same 24 hour period that would cause an overdraft.. so take out all the payments and then apply your deposit after those are settled - now that is super extra shady.

personally I'd just prefer them to bounce back and refuse a payment if there was not enough money in the account. Although I was charged for a bounced/bad check someone had given me at one point, so I'm guessing they could find a way to charge for similar.

Maybe I am missing the qualifier in "'private' banks" in that statement - but I've seen a lot of people pay a lot of overdraft fees and have accounts closed for them, not sure what "private" banks don't do such things, or how common uncommon.

[xook]

What would classify as a private bank? IME, you're given the option for overdrafts regardless.

[dan-robertson]

I think this is a dialect difference. To me (and presumably the parent?) private bank means a bank that offers private banking services to wealthy clients which generally involves selling certain loans or investment products rather than a current account. Whereas I think the grandparent meant “bank not owned by the state”. But I’m not entirely sure

[roystonvassey]

Yes. I meant private bank as in "not a government owned bank".