The big banks are legally robbing the Paul’s – customers — through the “agreement” that you must sign, donating to the Peter’s, and paying out shareholders with large returns. You can bet your bottom dollar much of the profits are coming from people struggling to keep up with paying the bills.
Recently, BMO made a $20 million-dollar donation, helping 7 Toronto Hospitals. One of my readers asked “why do only Toronto Hospital’s get the donation?” That $20 million donation makes BMO look good.
Now for a moment, let’s view the dark side of the donation. Where did the $20 million come from? Was it from non-sufficient fund fee’s that the bank made from people having to sign an agreement when opening an account? How much money have the banks made off of non-sufficient funds? I know the big banks have made billions from people that have an overdraft protection.
The legal binding “agreement” you sign when opening up a checking account at any major bank forces people to pay money they don’t have and the banks don’t give a shit or have any concern for the little guy or gal trying to make ends meet. Do the banks review a person’s financial situation before they charge fee’s? Not.
I’ve been a customer of CIBC for 20 years. I remember when I first started banking with CIBC. When I opened up a checking account, I had to sign the agreement or I could not open a checking account.
The agreement comprises account fees and services charges. Services charges include a fee for insufficient funds, etc. Sadly, the agreement, which I’m calling a “forced agreement” for this story because if I did not sign, I could not open a checking account, caused me an eviction and tens of thousands of dollars. Let me explain.
During the years I’ve added pre-authorized payments for life insurance, monthly insurance payments for my truck, the kids RESP, a life insurance policy cost’s me $30.00 a month, etc. Most of us have monthly banking fees and overdraft charges that include, monthly fee for having the overdraft protection, overdraft interest charges can vary each month depending on how much you’re into the overdraft protection, whatever the financial obligations are, the banks are ignoring the fact that most struggle to make ends meet, causing a chain reaction that could cause a family to go homeless, or even worse, a bankruptcy that possibly won’t be discharged because you can’t even afford to pay the lawyer.
During a highly contentious separation and custody dispute, I was on welfare. After a short time of separation, I finally obtained a court order for child support. Over the years the custody dispute continued and with child support coming in, thing’s started to get a little better until one day I had to file a lien against the family property.
Under the advice of my lawyer and the court administrator’s, I had to file a “unilateral withdrawal” the child support order from the Family Responsibility Office, which essentially meant that I would stop getting child support on behalf on the children. It was a tough decision to make as the children, and I, became dependent on the ongoing support for the children.
The procedure requested that the moment I withdrew the order from FRO, I was to do the calculations on what was owing, file a Writ of seizure against the family property with the Sheriff’s Office, once issued, I could refile the court order outlining child support with FRO. In doing this procedure, I had some financial difficulties. The children needed the financial support that the court awarded based on child support guidelines and without that money, I had to use the local food bank. Once the lien was issued, I refiled with FRO. It took some time for the paper work to be processed and once it was processed, for months, FRO was sending me $50.77 cents a week. Pre-authorized payments started bouncing back and I was getting hit with non-sufficient fund fee’s.
Obviously, the employer was in receipt of the child support court order or they could not garnish his wages, but why was the payroll department only sending $203.08 a month when the court order was for $1,048 a month? Getting answers from FRO was with great difficulty, with the “case owner” constantly citing that “you could withdrawal from the program if you don’t approve and or “I have a call into the payroll department but they are not getting back to me”
Due to a lack of finances and the employer not garnishing according to the court order, I could not financially keep up and pre-authorized payments were bouncing to non-sufficient funds. Not only was I getting hit with the cost of $45.00 for non-sufficient funds, the pre-authorized payments would get processed again according to the way financial departments processed. Those departments would process the payment within a couple days and again, bounced. Another $45.00 fee I was hit with. Stopping the payments at the bank were the same charges as non-sufficient funds. I couldn’t keep up. The moment a child support payment of $50.77 was deposited, the bank took it, applying it towards the non-sufficient fund fee.
It was a financial nightmare for the children and I. While I used the food bank, faced an eviction, ending up in a shelter, the shareholders made money and the bank looks good making donations.
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