by Nolan
Color me cynical. But I no longer love my bank. And they no longer love me.
In fact, I’ve come to realize that they never loved me, they were only in it for the money.
I used to think that one’s relationship with one’s banker was a key element of a happy adult life (the key to a happy childhood being one’s relationship with one’s blankey), but now I liken it more to a marriage in which the partner is of the what-have-you-done-for-me lately school of interpersonal expectation.
That only-in-it-for-the-money context applies in both cases, by the way.
And while I’ve changed both banks and domestic partners more than once, I’ve also learned how to recognize when the relationship is going south — it coincides with my credit score — and when to cut and run.
I’ve also learned why that happens. Because both banks and life partners are capable of lying through their teeth when it serves them.
Here’s five common untruths you will hear if you visit your bank often enough. You’re on your own regarding your co-signer.
They need to put your check on hold.
No, they don’t. And you can get around this by challenging that assertion.
Let’s say you’ve just sold your car, and you arrive at the bank with a personal check – even a cashier’s check at some paranoid banks – for, say, $17,ooo. A lot of money, that.
This gets worse if you’ve just sold a house and have a check in excess of six figures. (Then again, this is 2010… sorry, I reminisce… that’s not gonna happen.)
You’re not asking to have the check cashed, to walk out with a grocery bag full of bills. No, you just want to deposit the thing into your checking or savings account.
There’s a significant chance your bank, via the just-out-of-training teller, will tell you they need to put a hold on the check. That your deposit won’t become available to you for as many as 17 days (I’ve encountered this four times recently, as I’ve sold off everything I own to stay afloat, and have been given hold-times of 3, 11, 15 and 17 days.)
That little policy seems to change weekly, depending on which branch you go to.
The thing that’s wrong here is that checks – any check that doesn’t come from someplace like Kirgizstan or Caracas – no longer take 3, 11, 15 or 17 days to clear. They clear that night. Or if you show up too late in the day, it clears the next night.
Literally. The computers of the cashing bank and the issuing bank connect in the dark of the digital night to canoodle and reconcile their respective balance adjustments, which includes the availability of funds in the issuer’s account.
This decision to hold your check can be overridden by the bank manager. It happens daily. So don’t be afraid to ask. If you’ve had an account with t
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— Raymond Mcdaniel @ 6:58 pm — 
July 13, 2010