Bank Charges

[Hammermechanicman]

You are far safer using a credit card vs a debit card. Pay the balance off every month so no interest charges. A comprimized debit card/bank account is a B word to fix. A compromized credit card is fixed with a phone call. Setup CC charges to alert to your phone and you can instantly know about fradulent charges.

 

[bertsmobile1]

When tell my customers I do not do electronic banking they look at me like I have 2 heads
I ride with some IT guys, one works for a big bank
He does not do any electric banking other than taking cash from a teller machine if a branch is closed.
One of his favourite saying is " 2 types of people who phone bank, those who have been defrauded and those who will be defrauded "
The other techies work for different businesses but again neither of them do any e-banking or use credit / debit cards for anything other than getting cash from a branch or machine .
I lost my carry bag back when I was on crutches for a year
In that time some one got hold of my wallet & over a week removed every cent I had .
It took 15 years to get my money back from the bank and had I not been a graduate of UNSW so got their Law school to take up my case I would never have gotten my money back .
So lessons learned
several bank accounts with different institutions
Only ever do face to face transactions
Keep every receipt & statement .
The prime factor in my victory was walking into the court room with 2 trolley loads of archive boxes to be added into evidence .
These had every credit card receipt & statement back to 1964 in them ( or so we told the judge )
He adjourned the case , took the boxes into his chambers, called both attorneys in with him at the end of the session for "deliberations in chambers "
A week latter I got the money back
Down side was I had a house deposit in the bank before and by the time the case was resolved it was less than 1/2 as house prices had gone up that much .

 

[StarTech]

Yelp I am one those deadbeat credit card holders. Just 2000 to 4000 in payments per month. Kinda of a hassle to have a 2K limit but it keeps me paying to keep it up to date.

Now I do operate my business by doing electronic transfers. Pay all my bills via the online banking. As for many vendors I just pay them thru the Paypal account which is link to my CC. The problem with banking has been with my CC being hacked. I usually catch it about as quick as the bank as I do daily purchase and do keep a close eye on the CC account for fraudulent charges.

Whenever it happens it shut down my business for about a week. So I got keep track of things so I can shut down the account and get new card issued. As for the regular business checking account I only keep enough in it to pay about weeks worth of bills.

 

[Hammermechanicman]

Not sure about OZ but here paying with a paper check or with a debit card gives someone your bank routing number and your account number. All they need to take all your money. Using a third party processor like the evil PayPal hides your banking info is the safest tranaction. Costs a little but worth it. The laws governing credit cards here make the consumer not responsible for fraudulent transactions. It is not a courtesy but law. Most banking apps allow for all transactions to send texts to a phone so any fraudulent charges can be flagged immediately and a credit card can be replaced on 3 days. Electronic banking is more secure than paper if you work it right. Of course cash still works too. For now.

 

[bertsmobile1]

System is a bi different here.
Knowing the account name , account number & BSB ( routing number ) is no good if the account has no third party authorization ( ie electronic banking ) on it
And never using any card or electronic banking . other than an ATM machine put the onus on the bank to notify me if any unusual activity happens with the account ( I have that in writing from the court case ruling )
When the bank starts to hand out security dongles I would consider banking off the computer but phone banking is a no no if you do not have a lot of money you do not need .
I see all sorts of stuff like authority numbers that are generated by the bank, sent to you as a SMS then you need to type that in.
SO once you loose your phone down here it can take months to get the account happening again.
I have loaned a couple of people living money for a few weeks because they lost their phones & used a bank with no local branches so had to go interstate to re-establish their identity
I know of 2 criminal gangs who got caught with a card reader for all of those Pay wave type systems in brief cases .
Souped up to work from over a meter away then stood in lifts or walked through trains pulling sums from $ 4.99 to $ 200 out of every card they passed .
The $ 4.99 man had been doing it for years and had stolen hundred of millions & only got caught because he passed out on a train & the police looked in hid brief case too establish his identity ( got this story from a friend who is a rail security officer ) and another friend who does building security told me about the $ 200 debits when they detained some one who was lurking around the foyer ( lobby to some ) of a high security building because they thought he was trying to gain access to restricted floors .
Much like computer security the day after a bank rolls out a new unbeatable security update, the criminals have broken it.
With a cheque the money is my money till the warrant of commitment has been processed and this can only happen when the right piece of paper has passed through the right machine .
And while a crook may have had the stolen money credited to his account , if the paper does not follow up it gets reversed and the money comes back to me.
If the crook has cashed out then the bank foots the refund
THis is one of the reasons why down here the banks are doing their best to get people off cheques & into automatic banking of some sort.
And of course there is less processing costs with auto banking plus no requirement to keep the original pieces of paper .
If you are swindled via an automatic transaction then YOU have to proove that you had not made the transaction and how do you prove you did not spend $4.99 on a coffee at 8:12 am on your way to work ? Where as I can prove that cheque 1234567 was never written as I have it in my cheque book .

 

[StarTech]

It is to note too that thieves can scan the newer credit cards even when they are in your wallet. That why I have mine in a RFID blocking wallet. Even we take all precautions things can go wrong. A couple years ago I had $1500 remove from my bank account because of a damage MICR number on a check. The scanner read one number as an one when it was supposedly a nine. The person had folded the check and rubbed part of the MICR off. It actually was to be drawn on another business in my area within 15 miles of me. I had gotten an alert that I was overdrawn so I was on the phone with the bank when I got an incoming call alert. It was the bank calling me.

But no matter what we do there is always some crook trying the figure a way to get our money. Some just unwilling to make an honest living.

 

[Hammermechanicman]

You had to mention MICR. I used to aervice MICR check printers. Thanks for bringing back sooooo many bad memories.

 

[StarTech]

Burroughs call them encoders and yes I spent 8 yrs repairing them for Standard Register. The Burroughs ones were fairly good machines it was the later ones with Standard Register branding that were a pain to repair with those darn stepper motors and feed rollers. Kroger about drove me nuts trying to use them.

Most of the banks and other than the older Burroughs encoders.

As with all things they weren't the only thing I repaired at SRC. When I first started with SRC I walked right into a nightmare of a merger. For the first two years I had more windshield time than actual repair time putting out fires. By the time the eighth year rolled by I had my territory under control and actual had PMs under control so the actually new work was less as PM took care of a lot of the problems before they got reported.

What was a pain was having to go training and certification classes after I do been repairing the equipment for two year plus. I usually knew than the class teachers as I had hands on experience.Basically those classes were a big waste of my time especially when the tech that suppose to fill in just put things off until I got back. I finally got him back one year. Boy was he mad.

 

[7394]

I still prefer burying my pennies out back in mason jars..

 

[StarTech]

I still prefer burying my pennies out back in mason jars..

Pennies don't last like they once did...So those store better be darn sealed to where no moisture ever gets to them. I find them half eaten away by corrosion.

Besides dimes are the way to go as they are smaller and take less space.