Thank you for your email. If a loan is overpaid by $10.00 or less we do not send our customers a notice of it. However, if a payoff is received and $10.00 or less is still owed we consider it fully paid off. There is not a link on the website that explains this.

If you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
 

The original email was submitted to customer_service@boonebank.com. The reply came from a customer service rep at the bank.

In response, I sent this email:

Thank you for your quck and informative reply. I am sorry that I did not check my email til today to see your reply. In the situation, where a loan is overpaid by 10.00 or less, are you reporting it to the state as unclaimed cash? If not, why not?

According to http://www.treasurer.mo.gov/RemitUnclaimedProperty.aspx#faq2 “There is nothing too small that does not require reporting.”

Thanks again for answering my email.

The reply to that, which came from the Senior Vice President:

Our customer service center forwarded your emails to me because they were a little confused about the processes you were referring to. Like most financial institutions, we have a variety of ways we handle individual situations.

Perhaps it would be easier if you just gave me a call to discuss your specific questions. I’ll be happy to do the appropriate research and give you the answers you need.

I don’t know if I’ll reply to that. It’s just interesting that this little email went all the way up to the Sr. Vice President Level, don’t ya think? I thought the email was pretty simple, and non-confusing, but maybe I’m wrong?

I guess their Customer Service does not know how to handle a simple little question of why the bank is not reporting overpayments to the State as Unclaimed cash and is instead pocketing it… I guess I can’t blame them for forwarding the question to a supervisor, but it does seem very intriguing that such a simple question’s answer isn’t general info that the Customer Service Level that deals with the public one-on-one most of the time would have a quick answer to – don’t you think?

Over at Wikipedia I found some interesting reading on the topic of writeoffs…. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write-off
 

A negative write-off refers to the decision not to pay back an individual or organization that has overpaid on an account. Negative write-offs can sometimes be seen as fraudulent activity if those who overpay a claim or bill are not informed that they have overpaid and are not given any chance to reconcile their overpayment or be refunded.

Some institutions such as banks, hospitals, universities, and other large organizations regularly perform negative write-offs, especially when the amount is considered low dollar, e.g. $5.00 at some places or up to $15.00 or more at others.

As a potential customer of yours, I’d like to ask you if you folks have a policy like that?  If so, how small does the balance have to be before you write the balance off without paying the customer for their overpayment.  Is there an online link to your policy about this somewhere?

According to Wikepedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writeoff

A negative write-off refers to the decision not to pay back an individual or organization that has overpaid on an account. Negative write-offs can sometimes be seen as fraudulent activity if those who overpay a claim or bill are not informed that they have overpaid and are not given any chance to reconcile their overpayment or be refunded.

Some institutions such as banks, hospitals, universities, and other large organizations regularly perform negative write-offs, especially when the amount is considered low dollar, e.g. $5.00 at some places or up to $15.00 or more at others.

Many various corporations and industries have a tendency to simply write off small dollar over and underpayments since the cost to deal with them seems to exceed what they are worth.  For small dollar underpayments this is not typically a problem since the company, corporation, etc. in question is essentially discounting their services esentially.  However, what is a problem, and a very large one is that many times the companies write off both over and underpayments…

That means if they owe money to someone that has overpaid, they are simply writing off what they owe others.  On an individual basis, that might not mean much, but for gigantic corporations who deal with millions of dollars yearly, that means the corporations are gobling up literally tons of others peoples money and keeping it.  That seems a bit fishy to me.  It seems a bit fraudulent too on some levels.  What I plan to do with this blog is try various methods of contacting many companies in order to ask them what their policies are about small dollar overpayments and how to deal with them, and then post their replies here.  If there is no reply, I might also post that information here.  In this way, more of the general public will be made aware of the fact that they might be loosing tons of money to these gigantic corporations and someone will finally create some laws to deal with this type of fraudulent activity.