As requested by readers of my previous post about my former bank, here is the huge check I got from Citibank, wherein they spent $.37 on postage, another couple cents on an envelope, another couple cents on a check, and a whole of lot of peoples' time in sorting it out, just to send me the whopping total of "0 dols 01 cts".
Morons.
HAH! Thanks for that. BEST CHECK EVER :)
you should now hold that check for a couple of months, that ought to screw up the 'puters balancing the account for a while.
It's a good thing that Citibank knows banking law better than you do.
Though many businesses are allowed to "wash" a tiny transaction like this, "banks" are among those that are forbidden by law from doing so. This is a consumer protection provision to avoid slippery-slope shenanigans by the financial industry.
And if you never cash that check, they have to keep it on the books, and after seven-ish years it's remitted to the state (via "escheat") - these form the "unclaimed funds" that you hear about from time to time. This is also a consumer protection so that financial institutions don't benefit from "accidently" "losing" customer information.
It's silly to cut a check for $.01, but it's required by law.
Ah, but they could have simply said "Mr. Balling, what I'll do is waive all but $0.01 of our perfectly legitimate service charges" and that would have solved that.
The service fees were, according to their terms and conditions, perfectly legitimate. They could have waived any fraction of them up to and including 100% if they wanted to. They *could* have opted to waive all but a penny, solving both parties' problems.