Not in NYC – many of the smaller places only take cash.


You say that you agree with him and the overdraft thing is disgusting, but then you say that the overdraft protection should be active by default to protect the consumer (incidentally, at the banks I know about, it is). So… uh, what? :wink:

My bank (plug: USAA, military only [active, retired, separated, etc], I love them) has overdraft but it's free (afaik, never overcharged) and rolls into a second account of yours. It's on by default with checking -> credit card or checking -> savings, but can be configured/turned off.

I used to have a bank where overdraft protection was free, as long as you had a backup account with money – typically a checking/saving account configuration as you mentioned. I took advantage of it to not worry about allocating money between checking and saving: just stick it all in saving, and let the overdraft protection worry about keeping the checking account full.

They even protected you to some extent if your backup was empty, but that wasn't free. People who want to go over should get a credit card, or better yet, just not go over. :smile:

My new bank doesn't distinguish between checking and saving, so the point is moot.

Not sure what you mean… Overdraft fees are fiscal rape. Turn off overdraft by default or include some other default option so the customer doesn't get screwed just because he didn't know about the secret voodoo protection plan.

I think there must be something lost in translation because I'm also not sure what you mean. So just to clarify, do you mean that transactions should be denied by default if it would cause an overdraft?
What I don't understand is why you say it's disgusting but then should be active by default.

Not entirely true… I'm assuming you're either using your system default "ssh" command to log in, in which case your account may already have an ssh key generated for you by your admin. Having it use an alternate key isn't obvious, at least on my ssh client. If you're using a custom client, it may generate the keypair in the background. Not saying someone who knows how they work can't easily get around it…. just that it's less point-and-click than making a web-based email account.



Actually, Blizzard does ban credit cards, and wipes every account associated with them. I don't know about other companies.

Yes. What banks are doing is to allow debit transactions to go through even though your account is negative. I'm not talking about overdraft protection backed by a savings account, just regular accounts. My bank allows an account to go $500 in the hole. They call this a service. Yes it's fiscal rape. You have to tell the bank you don't want this "service". That is when you attempt to use your debut card and you are overdrawn it disallows the transaction. There's another thing they do. They don't even log the bank fees on your account until 2 days after the overdraft occurs.

I went through this crap a couple of years ago with my then underage son's account. He managed to rack up $800+ in bank fees with a debit card. It's really amazing how this fiscal rape works. Imagine you have 1 penny in your account, but you thought you had $20 because you forgot to write down a transaction. You buy 10 soda pops at .75 a piece 10 different times during the day with your debit card. That's $330 in bank fees. You do it again the next day. That's $370 in bank fees. None of the fees have yet appeared, and won't for another day. At the time he made about $100 a week. Anyway it was a good lesson for him. The bank certainly had no qualms about gang raping him.

I guess I've always tended to think of debit cards as being directly connected to a bank account (so you open an account, and the bank sends you a debit card for accessing that one specific account). Also, my usage of the word "immediately" was a poor one - what I should have said was, they are authorised to withdraw the money immediately, rather than having to wait until the end of the month. In practice it usually takes two or three days for the money to be deducted.

My UK VISA card requires a minimum payment to be made each month, which I typically make from my UK bank account. I could also give my credit card company permission to automatically deduct the minimum, or even the full amount, each month. But that's optional.

The first company I worked for in Germany (Sony Ericsson) required us to have credit cards, primarily for travel purposes. We were issued with both a VISA and MasterCard, and Sony Ericsson added roughly 2-3 EUR to our monthly salary to cover the card fee. Any payments made with the MasterCard were automatically paid off within a day or two from whichever bank account we'd nominated, while the VISA card was automatically (and fully) paid off at the end of each month. However we were told that the VISA was a special arrangement with the credit card company, so that business expenses could be compensated before being deducted from our accounts. We could use the MasterCard for personal things, but not the VISA.

However my colleague seems to have the same deal with his credit card, so it could be I misunderstood. Even so, the fact that the card has to be fully paid off at the end of each month is still pretty limiting, IMO, and (when combined with the fees) might go some way towards explaining why credit cards aren't so popular here.

Quick addition: While writing this I just asked my wife what the deal is with her VISA card, as she got one recently. She said that payments made with the card are automatically deducted from her Giro account within a few days. I asked if she could choose to pay it off at the end of the month, and she said she can't - they don't allow that. I asked if the bank considered it a credit card or debit card, and she said they call it a credit card.


When I lived in the UK (up until late 2001), transactions were always authorised with signatures, unless you were withdrawing cash from an ATM. In recent years they've been moving over to a PIN system, which was pretty embarrassing the first time I encountered it as I couldn't remember my PIN (never having needed to use it before).

In Germany it seems to depend on the shop, but it's certainly not uncommon to authorise transactions with a signature (in fact it's now probably more common than in the UK). The larger stores usually require you to enter your PIN though.

Ah. I was not referring to this when I was talking about overdraft protection – I was referring to the transfer of money between accounts. Indeed the above does not sound like "protection".


Yes, correct. I think a debit card kind of has to be. But a credit card can be attached to an account as well, perhaps not as strongly, but basically attached because it's managed by the same bank, you directly transfer money to pay it off, etc.


I hate this "minimum payment" business. What some people mean by this is not the minimum to avoid interest, but the minimum to be considered solvent, and in the meantime the amount between the minimum and the balance starts accruing interest against you…
I just pay off my full balance every month. I have not used my credit card for actual credit a single time. If I wanted a loan, there are much better ways to get one…


I suspect there is some "abuse of notation" going on here. If there's no credit involved, it necessarily can't be a credit card. :wink: Maybe the bank is using the term to make it sound different from other products. Or maybe there is a line of credit option available somewhere but that isn't automatically invoked if you don't pay things off.