Customers of the State Employees Credit Union of North Carolina and other financial institutions may be charged high or unfair overdraft fees under deceptive circumstances.

Indeed, some customers may find that they are even charged overdraft fees when they have not voluntarily signed up for an overdraft protection program.

The State Employees Credit Union of North Carolina, based in Raleigh, North Carolina, is one of the financial institutions involved in an investigation of deceptive overdraft fee practices.

While the term “overdraft protection” certainly makes these programs sound like beneficial options for customers, some banks may be leaving out essential information about their overdraft protection programs in order to convince customers to sign up.

The law requires that banks and credit unions like the State Employees Credit Union of North Carolina allow their customers to voluntarily opt in or out of their overdraft protection programs.

However, some banks may either sign customers up without informing them they can opt out, or even purposely avoid giving them pertinent information regarding their overdraft fee practices.

Financial institutions like the State Employees Credit Union of North Carolina benefit from these deceptive overdraft practices, raking in billions across the country each year from overdraft fees alone, reports say.

The State Employees Credit Union of North Carolina and other financial institutions are being investigated for allegedly misrepresenting the benefits of overdraft protection programs to their customers or failing to explain the details of these programs.

An inadequate understanding of how overdraft fees work and how banks employ them can lead to customers paying more money in fees than they would have with all the information—which is what some banks are counting on.

What are Overdraft Fees?

An overdraft fee is the charge incurred when a bank customer overdraws their account in order to cover the transaction required to move money and cover the payment.

However, according to some reports, financial institutions like the State Employees Credit Union of North Carolina may be engaging in deceptive overdraft practices in order to get the highest fees from their customers.

Banks can use a variety of unfair overdraft practices to increase the amount they receive in fees. Some banks may purposely reorder the transactions of their customers so that the highest number of overdraft fee charges is registered.

Banks can accomplish this by deliberately processing the largest transactions first, which makes each payment following that transaction more likely to overdraw the account.

In many cases, these overdraft practices affect the Americans who can least afford unfair fees.

Bank customers who routinely have less money available to them in their accounts are more likely to overdraw them, and these kinds of deceptive overdraft fee practices do not help.

Indeed, for poor Americans, being routinely hit with excessive overdraft fees can make already difficult financial situations even harder.

Some bank and credit union customers affected by overdraft fees and deceptive practices have begun filing lawsuits against financial institutions like the State Employees Credit Union of North Carolina

If you have been subjected to unfair overdraft fee practices by the State Employees Credit Union of North Carolina or another financial institution, you may be able to join a class action overdraft fees lawsuit.

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