Overdrafting With Simple

I have a checking account with Simple, and now that we’ve combined finances it is my “fun money” account. My tagline for them is basically, “Simple: not as bad as most banks, but still a bank, ok?”

We haven’t had much room in our budget for fun recently, so when I got stuck in an insane loop trying to link our main, Chase account to my Simple account (“No accounts linked.” “That account has already been linked.”) I gave up.

I could send money TO Chase but I couldn’t send money FROM Chase to Simple. She can reach me, but I can’t get to her.

So of course instead of calling some damned Chase representative to resolve this, whenever we’ve had some extra money, I just write myself a check and deposit it in my Simple account using my phone. It worked fine.

Or it did, until my Dropbox account renewed, my iCloud storage renewed, and my Spotify account did its monthly charge, all in the same week. Oh and I bought an Emily Books book (Ferrante fever!). All of these things charge me automatically through Paypal which I kept under my Simple account because they seemed like Fun Money things!

CUE CASCADING OVERDRAFTS.

Unlike when I overdrafted with Bank of America, I did not get a series of $35 charges. In fact, I got no charges at all. Can you imagine? I just got notices from Paypal that my purchases were rejected, and they’d try again in 3 days.

I mentally apologized to Emily Books, and that got out our Chase checkbook to write myself a check for $200. I took a photo of the front, then signed the back and took a photo of it. As I clicked submit a little modal popped up. It said some version of, “Mobile check deposit has been disabled for your account. To find out why, contact customer service. If you want to deposit a check, you can mail it to us.”

First of all, I am not mailing you a check you crackpot banking service. I put down the check and ran into the kitchen to rant about this a little then sent customer service a message. I figured I knew why. My account was overdrawn. But wait. My account was overdrawn so I couldn’t deposit money into it? COOL.

Hi,

Just writing as instructed to find out why mobile check deposit is turned off for my account.

Thanks,

Meaghan

I sent this on 9/7. Paypal tried to charge me a few more times. I got a letter in the mail from the bank saying my account was overdrawn $88.70. Thank you. By this time, Dustin has managed to transfer money frm Chase to his Simple account, and then transfer money from his Simple to my Simple. As soon as that deposit went through, I got an email from Simple letting me know I had a message.

Hey Meaghan,

Apologies for the late response! It looks like mobile deposit was temporarily disabled because your account was slightly in the negative. Now that your account is back up, that feature has been re-enabled. If you’re ever stuck in this situation again, just give us a call! We can temporarily credit you so a deposit can be made!

Your account was in the negative so you couldn’t deposit anything. But now that it’s resolved, we’re letting you know that if it happens again, call us and we will GIVE YOU MONEY so that you can make a deposit.

I kind of love how far out of their way this bank will go to accommodate their own nonsense policy. Or ok, their nonsense policy that I assume either has something to do with security or not trusting me to not-bounce my checks. No idea. But it is beautifully insane and I love them for not charging when I overdraft. I love this support representative and his exclamation points. And I hate budgets but I love Elena Ferrante.

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