Bank of America: Return Item Chargeback?

September 9th, 2008 | 7:48 am | Posted in Finance |

As I do each morning, I logged into my Bank of America account to make sure that everything in my checking account was in order and as I expected it.

I’ve been doing this sort of thing for, hmmmmm, probably almost 10 years now. It’s become part of my routine.

In all that time, there has been only one instance of an inconsistency. Just one.

Then, this morning, I saw this:

RETURN ITEM CHARGEBACK, eh? What is that?

I clicked on the transaction. As is the norm, that doesn’t tell me anything. Sometimes I wonder why they even let you click on transactions for “more details.”

At first I’m thinking, in a semi-panic mode, did I overdraw my account?

That’s never happened.

How could it happen?

I strive to never dip below $750 (when Bank of America starts to charge me monthly maintenance fees).

I haven’t written any big checks lately…

There isn’t a holiday this week that could have messed up the dates on my auto-payments either…

“Return item”? Maybe it’s a re-stocking fee of some sort. But I haven’t returned anything in years. And that would have gone onto a credit card, I’d think…

And the term “chargeback” really makes it sound like a credit card transaction or something. My checking account is just that — a checking account. There isn’t a debit card attached to it. No little VISA or Mastercard logo on my card either.

Maybe it’s a bank error — but not in my favor?

Yeah, that must be the problem.

A quick Google of “Return Item Chargeback” gave mixed results.

You know, results from that “Yahoo Answers” service. Sure, they can call it a “new way to find and share information”, but in my experience, it’s been mostly misinformation…

You’d think Bank of America would have a listing of all of their transaction descriptions somewhere on their website. They don’t. I looked.

But I did come to the conclusion that it wasn’t an error on BoA’s part. It’s that one of my clients wrote me a bad check back on September 2 and this is it coming back out of my account.

Thankfully, it was only $9.00. No sweat.

But I’ve got to keep in the back of my mind that before I do any large scale projects for them in the future, I need to be paid up front.

Who bounces a $9.00 check?

I almost feel bad for the fees they’re going to incur because of this…

And how awkward is it going to be to let them know, “Hey, remember that $9 invoice I sent you? Yeah, well, you need to pay it again…”