Funny

These days.. maybe you are right. When i was fresh out into the world I lived paycheck to paycheck. Rent comes due, I have to try and stretch it as i have a few days grace and i need things like food to live and gas to get to work.

Get my check, deposit it, give rent check later that day. Guess which cleared first? I was short 12 cents and got hit with $80 in fees (inflation adjusted it's nearly twice that now) and had to pay rent via money order for 6 months. 12 cents! They could have just shorted it that amount and I'd have been happy to give them a quarter I had laying around. But rather it just made my next month more miserable.

I do think things are better now and there are plenty of overdraft protection methods in place and who uses checks anyway but fact is they had my deposit and did the withdrawal first.

I'm genuinely glad you've never had to deal with such a situation and yes $35 isn't bad. But the thing is - fuck banks. They will find every opportunity to hurt the less fortunate.

Ironically I still bank with them, or what they became. I'm on my 4th account now because their fraud protection is pretty good. So there's a positive aspect.