Slashdot Mirror
Employers Switching From Payroll Checks To Prepaid Cards With Fees
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times reports a growing number of American workers are being paid by prepaid payroll card. The cards often have fees attached to basic services like making a cash withdrawal or for inactivity. Some employees report that the employers pay by card by default, with paperwork barriers to opting out, and some report that their employers refuse to pay them by check or direct deposit. The issuing banks pitch the cards to employers as a cost-cutting payroll alternative, and sometimes even offer a financial reward for each employee they sign up."
I don't understand how this can be legal - fees for withdrawals is basically a pay cut. I guess this is what you get when you believe unions are evil...
Most companies switched to direct deposit by now.
Weekly? Bi-weekly seems to be the most common in the US.
I've been thin for cash during that second week enough times, I can only imagine how much worse it would be to go a whole month.
They were in the process of doing this when i left the company about 4 years ago, no word if it went through.
If so, that's a few million right there.
The NYTimes talks about the fees that come along with the use of a preloaded debit card, but in some states (e.g. California), there is a legal requirement that the employee be able to get their pay without any fees, etc. , and at a location convenient to them. No paycheck drawn on a bank in some other state with only 3 branches in that state, etc.
Mind you, that doesn't mean that employers actually follow the rules, or that the employees, who typically are spending all their time just staying alive, will pursue this with the Dept of Labor Standards Enforcement, but at least it is the law.
As someone who gets paid once monthly -- it's not that bad, once you get your budget set up. I get paid on the last day of the month, unless that is a weekend, in which case I get paid the Friday before. I have *most* of my bills set to be due on the 5'th, so I get them all out of the way right up front. I have a few that are due around the 20'th, but since they are stable (IE: they don't change), it's easy to budget around them.
bork bork bork!
Tell me again how it is the employee's responsibility to defray the employer's payroll processing costs?
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
This frustrated me this year. I received a pre-pair card from the State of Oklahoma for my OK Tax Return. I swear I filled out the direct deposit info, but perhaps I didn't (I could check my copies...). What upset me is the fees for funds withdrawals/etc. This is my money, the state and its corporate partner shouldn't be making money off me when I try to get it.
The card did allow a single withdrawal without a fee at an ATM. I couldn't find an ATM it would work in. Finally logged in to the associated website and transferred to my banking account, with a $0.75 fee. What a crock!
Here's the Oklahoma website pdf detailing the info: http://www.tax.ok.gov/it2011/RefundCard.pdf
and their FAQ: http://www.tax.ok.gov/faq/faqDEBITCARD001.html
I should have mentioned -- I'm also paid via direct deposit. If my 'default' pay were via one of these crappy cards, I'd do *whatever* paperwork was needed to get a normal check or direct deposit...
bork bork bork!
McDonald's is being sued for allegedly paying less than minimum wage using this method.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
I kinda like bi-weekly, myself... I budget myself around the idea of 24 (2x12) paychecks... but GET 26... which means two paychecks are entirely outside of the budget and are free-for-alls, basically.
The check cashing services are also closely allied with the pay day loan services that charge interests that work out to something like 240% on annualized basis. These check cashing services are one of the main opponents of Wall street reform, they are very well organized and media savvy. I would not be surprised if this sudden interest in prepaid card fees and the media blitz is actually organized by these loan sharks.
It costs money to process these transactions. It is not as much as the banks charge as fees and the fees can be unreasonably high. But still that is not as bad as what these check cashing services charge. I would rather work towards giving the regular banks some tax incentives to provide these prepaid cards without fees when they were given as wages for people below poverty line. Killing the whole idea of prepaid cards or demonizing the employers who provide them will prove to be very counterproductive.
Please educate yourself about the plight of the poor at the hands of check cashing services on one hand, checking account with fees on the other hand, people not having fixed addresses or visas who can not open bank accounts in the first place before jumping on the band wagon denouncing the wage card with fees or the employers who provide them.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Ostensibly, this is a means to help folks who don't have a bank account to carry electronic money around. In some cases, it's on the up-and-up; many of these cards charge monthly fees that are lower than what, say, Bank of America will weasel out of you on a monthly basis. I had a NetSpend card for awhile as an experiment of sorts, and it worked out very well... enough to get me to drop my old BoA account for about a year, until I found a credit union that better suited my needs.
OTOH, many of these cards are shady as hell, and little wonder some employers push them - the kickbacks have got to be extremely tempting, to say the least. Then again, many banks are just as bad, if not worse.
Long-term, I see it as an overall move towards ditching cash altogether - the poor are the last barrier to such a society, and these card programs are aimed squarely at them. Most are unable to get a bank account (bounced checks, etc), they often get state assistance nowadays in the form of debit cards now. OTOH, cash has a wonderful way of getting paid without the IRS knowing about it, so I can see government's angle in wanting e-money over the regular stuff. Cash also makes it hard for police to track money flow, etc... so yeah, I can see the allure from that viewpoint. I can also see the allure of not having to print and distribute paychecks from the employer's end.
All that said, I wonder how long it will be until cash is done away with altogether, and what the drawbacks to society will be from doing so. Cash is a beautiful means of buying things without the purchase being tracked (and yes, most times it is not only legit, but done for good reasons), and it has the advantage of being accepted pretty much anywhere (even if you have to convert currency first. Finally and most important, cash doesn't require a transaction fee every time it gets used - way too much room for abuse and corruption there.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
This one makes the point well.
http://consumerist.com/2013/06/17/ex-mcdonalds-employee-sues-because-she-doesnt-want-her-paycheck-on-a-prepaid-debit-card/
It's not hard. Really, unless you're saving absolutely nothing, you should have enough of a cushion to be able to spend into that in advance of the paycheck. If you budget properly, the dint in your savings is only short-term.
I get paid monthly; it goes into my mortgage, and I transfer out a weekly sum for day-to-day needs. I pay my bills straight from the mortgage.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I owe my soul to the company store
uh.. just live lighter for 4 weeks.
I think US companies just like to spend more on unnecessary paperwork.
monthly and directly to bank account is the norm over here.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Any company stupid enough to drive people away with such a stupid payroll system definitely deserves to go under after leaving behind only the bottom of the barrel worst employees. Anyone with half a brain left to go work somewhere else.
I agree this is heinous, but it's just a symptom of a problem that's beem going on for decades. Why are bank transaction fees acceptable *at all*? Banks used to pay interest for the privilege of using/investing my money while I have it in their bank. I shouldn't have to pay to use what belongs to me, and I don't understand why people put up with it. I personally use baning services that don't charge fees; they exist, why dont more people uae them?
McDonald's is NOT being sued. McDonalds has nothing to do with employee payroll processing in individual restaurants. The franchisee pulling this stunt is the business getting sued.
Agreed. I would opt the hell out of those BS cards. I can't believe that this is even a real thing. The first I heard of it was last week.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
1) You can, indeed, get free checking from Credit Unions pretty easy. Some banks too. There really are places that'll do business with you for no money up front and they won't charge you fees so long as you don't do things like overdraw.
2) They say companies are trying to do this instead of direct deposit. DD costs companies next to nothing. The Automated Clearing House (which is how they all do it) charges $0.35/transaction. This is why companies like to pay people that way. It adds just a trivial cost, and it all automated, the money comes out of their account in to yours. Well the only reason to go prepaid cards instead would be because the bank is bribing them, not because it is cheaper because the ACH cost is just fucking trivial.
This is not a matter of being nice to poor employees, this is a matter of fucking people over.
I could certainly understand offering it as an option. Maybe some employees would find it convenient or financially advantageous. But trying to force people on it? That is just trying to screw them over for a very minor benefit. Like I said, ACH is $0.35/transaction (or 0.06% of a minimum wage paycheck, not counting payroll tax and all that jazz if you want to look at it that way) and it is good bookkeeping wise since the transaction hits right away so you know the status of your current accounts.
Who knew there were so many state laws on this:
http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/payday.htm
I've done both. I've been salary and bi-weekly, semi-monthly and monthly. I don't think there really is a "normal" in this regard. It's just whatever the employer feels like doing.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I've mostly seen it used by companies that insist on direct deposit, with employees that refuse to have a bank account for whatever reason. Mostly labor workers, not skilled workers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip
I worked at one time where I was paid with one of those cards.
We were paid weekly because we were peon min wage packers.
It was free to transfer to a bank account. There were no fees if we kept a balance - I moved my money out of the card as soon as the company deposited money into it because I didn't trust them.
Anyway, I don't have the fee schedule in front of me to make further comments about the particular card I have.
But the point is, peon min wage jobs pay weekly.
That was a shitty job. You had to show up over an hour before you could even clock in with the hopes of getting selected to work that day. If you got selected, you were able to go to the head of the line the next day. If you had to take a day off, you lost your spot and back in line.
If you weren't selected, you just spent you morning -5AM - 6AM waiting around for no pay. A lot of folks got discouraged and never cam e back after a couple of days waiting around and not working.
The body shop that brought the workers in was ALWAYS recruiting more and turning away more in the mornings - it was retarded.
They would train people on a machine, and the operator would work for a month or two, and then when business dropped they would not call anyone into work.
There were many times as a machine operator where if you still needed to work, they would demote you and you were back to min wage loading machines or packing games.
And when business was slow, no work at all.
And then after work, you had to stand in line for about a half hour - UNPAID - in order for security to search you to make sure you're not trying to smuggle out a video game.
So, you would spend at least 90 minutes a day at the plant unpaid.
Don't like it, you don't have to work there.
And the treatment by the company! It was clear that you were crap. Nothing. That you could be replaced at ANY time - and it was true. There are so many desperate people WANTING to work - contrary to what the conservative pundits say -that they can replace you at ANY time.
The poor are treated like garbage in this country. They are treated as subhuman. And when you're constantly treated that way you start to wonder if it's true.
We, the US, are a class based society - with very little mobility. And if you fall off your rung on the ladder, good luck getting back up it's nearly impossible. Just try saying in an interview - if you actually get one - "when I was out of development work, I worked a min wage job 11 hours a day."
And the industry still expects you to keep your skills up having to live that way.
These cards are usually given to people who are working paycheck-to-paycheck for not much money. Going an extra couple weeks (or even just one week) without getting paid can be the difference between eating and not eating.
Your setup where you withdraw from your mortgage is a luxury that I would say most people--especially those who are most likely to be offered payroll debit cards--are very unlikely to have access to.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
So.. if this is anything like a real Debit/Cred card, the same security holes would seem to apply. Holes you wouldn't have with paper check or direct deposit. When my paycheck has been spent and I didn't make the withdrawl, who is going to believe me?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
uh.. just live lighter for 4 weeks.
I think US companies just like to spend more on unnecessary paperwork.
monthly and directly to bank account is the norm over here.
You know, for as much as I see people from European countries bash on big corporations, you guys sure seem fine with letting them earn interest on your money for an extra 6 months a year.
The benefits to monthly payroll are purely for the employer- they don't have to spend as much processing payroll since it happens half as often, and they can earn more interest on the money before giving it to you.
It started with some states, getting rid of both checks and direct deposit for unemployment benefits. Yeah, you get your card, and there's some way to get some cash for free, but there's all sorts of limits and restrictions. You either use it to buy stuff so that the merchants end paying the issuing bank, or you get your cash to your checking account in one payment and it costs you.
As an employer I can attest that payroll services have been pushing this on me hard since at least 2008. They're obviously getting a commission, or they would not be promoting it so aggressively. My default is always direct deposit, but I do pass along the paperwork for the debit card to new hires--this results in a blank uncomprehending stare as they process the idea; "why in the hell would I want to do that???" ;-)
If the banks could charge us fees for paying in cash, they would. From their point of view this is the next best thing.
The GP wasn't talking about payroll debit cards; he was talking about the difficulties of a monthly pay-cycle versus weekly/fortnightly.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I've never heard of it until this morning when I read it on Slashdot. If an employer tried to pay me with these, I'd laugh in their face.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Sometimes you need a bootstrap. People in low-wage jobs often run on razor thin budgets. Imagine you have no money and have to get a job and still come to the job dressed and clean. That's a real issue, not something made up.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Quite true! Once you find yourself in ChexSystems (I think that's what they're called), you're blacklisted from all traditional banks.
But then, hardly anybody takes checks anymore, and those that do often process them electronically on the spot, eliminating much of the "benefit" of checks for poor people (namely, "floating" checks a few days before you get paid when you don't have the balance to cover it.)
I was young and poor once. Juggling checks so I could get by without bouncing any is an art all its own, and a much harder one to accomplish nowadays.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
I switched to a credit union in 2010 after I got fucked over by S & T Bank. My credit union charged me $10.00 for membership.
If you're in a bad financial situation, it can be hard to come up with a spare $10.00 but isn't that better than getting charged $4.00 EVERY TIME you want to access your money?
Yes, being poor sucks. But at some point, you have to start making decisions with an eye towards the long term.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Next step will be making the cards so they can only be used at certain stores. Welcome to the virtual company town.
Yes, that $10 (which at most CUs is refundable when you close your account) is better than being charged $4 every time you want access to your money, but a lot of poor people simply don't think that far ahead, and have zero financial management ability whatsoever. I've seen it with people I've hired for domestic duties; they use check-cashing stores for absolutely everything.
And these cards don't help change that scenario either.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
The benefits to monthly payroll are purely for the employer- they don't have to spend as much processing payroll since it happens half as often, and they can earn more interest on the money before giving it to you.
By this argument, everyone ought to get paid daily, assuming banks calculate interest daily where you are. At some point, it just becomes absurdly inefficient.
Paying monthly in arrears is the standard for salaried work here in the UK, and since most household bills are also monthly and the related government tax calculations tend to be monthly, everything lines up just fine.
And it's not your money they're holding on to, if your contract says you'll be paid monthly in arrears. It's theirs until payday, in black and white. If you don't like that, negotiate yourself a tiny payrise or something to compensate for your lost interest.
By the way, you're pretty much wrong about the whole interest-earning thing for businesses as well. Here in the UK, businesses earn about 0.1% annual interest rates on money in most bank accounts. The amount they save by deferring salary payments to monthly instead of some more frequent interval is negligible. The saving is in halving the admin overhead (relative to fortnightly payments) and making fewer financial transfers (for which banks will charge a fee).
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I remember when they started this....I thought it was a great thing to see checks clear instantly. Then i realized, banks still kept their "hold" on the money. So it was the worst of both words, the check writer has no float time, AND the person cashing it still has to wait that whole float time. Basically, the banks stole the float time for themselves.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
We're presumably not in the kinds of jobs where this would be happening. People being paid through that method may not have the option to take a principled stand by bursting in to laughter before nipping home for a glass of Grey Goose.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Short of that, they may just offer "no fee" transactions at certain stores, while charging noticeable ($2-5) fees at any other location. They don't have to ban the cards from specific stores, just give you an incentive to shop at one specific store.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
You seem to be under the delusion that people are rational beings that are not subject to their upbringing. Even you would probably be in the same boat as they if you had their life. Just feel lucky that you had a better life that lead to you being in a superior position.
With all due respect sir, you don't know what my life and upbringing were like.
I've been luckier than many. Perhaps in some ways, I've been luckier than most. However, I have faced more than my fair share of hardship.
These are not perpetual infants that we're talking about. These are people who are presumably adults and are responsible for their own decisions, rational or not.
At some point, we become responsible for ourselves.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I'm not sure what bank you deal with, but at my bank funds are available the next business day after I deposit, and the first $100 is available immediately. Maybe that's "float", but not enough that I'm going to squawk.
One important thing for people to realize is that even if the bank clear the check immediately, as in the instant you present it, it can still bounce. All the electronic clearing does is validate that the account number is real and that the account has sufficient funds to cover the check. The account holder can still claim that the check is a forgery and you are then liable for the amount of the check unless some other resolution is arrived at, e.g. it can be shown that the presenter of the check is lying that it is a forgery.
Please don't tell me these organizations aren't stocked to the gills, from head to tail with sociopaths. It's long past time we stop spending money to bail them out, undo the damage in other people's lives they've done, and in this case spend time writing new legislation to stop them from doing something they know perfectly well they should not be doing - exploiting the lowest paid workers in society for everything they can , until the Congress gets around to making it illegal.
It's so outrageous and such an egregious evacuation of all moral responsibility you have to ask yourself is it just a money grab until Congress acts or is it deliberately designed to provoke the legislation-reaction and designed to be used as a bargaining chip, something their political allies in Congress can use to bargain in exchange for some other , less immediately outrageous but more systemically poisonous , "deregulation".
The whole issue is virtually made-for-Democratiuc moral outrage and gives the Republican something to "trade away", something for the Democrats to parade around as a victory and all the while Wells Fargo, Goddamn Sachs and Bunch of Assholes are gorging themselves in their box seats watching their favorite blood-sport, raping the poor and defenseless.
Don't doubt for a minute is the META level the 1% thinks at, this is exactly what preoccupies them. When what you personally decide to do or not do results in legislation, then that's something worth considering the implications of. Of course, you and I don't spend time doing that because what we decide to do this morning doesn't result in legislation, but if for some reason it did, it wouldn't be long until you understood that you have the power to create horses for the horse-trading bazaar Congress ultimately is.
That is, when Congress is working at all.
I would go further and say that instituting these fees is an example of collusive signalling between banks. One does it and the others see. Each knows internally it's going to be legislatively forbidden soon enough. They recognize in it a Congressional bargaining chip, as do members of both political parties who know how to hit a softball when one is lobbed at them.
No one has to say anything explicit to anyone. Someone makes a move and everyone else follows on. From a certain, naive perspective, it's market based response, a decision to enter a profitable market on the part of competing players.
In reality it's an play to influence legislation on another, much more potentially profitable issue . No one can prove anything. There was no collusion to be proved (and we all know what high standards for proof the DoJ has for the coke snorting class ) and no one is coordinating to do anything.
I don't buy it. This goes well beyond the mere presumed sociopathy of Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon and their henchmen. I smell a too-stinky rat. Far far too stinky.
No, of course not, but for several reasons. 1) You really don't want to get too entangled with people that have that many problems in life; from what I saw, many of them had constant drama of some kind going on in their lives: relatives going to jail, relatives getting maimed in drug deals gone bad, one housekeeper even had a nephew who raped and murdered a small girl. And 2) they wouldn't know what to do with a CU account. These people operate solely on cash; keeping money in a bank is a foreign concept for them.
Yes, to an extent, people are responsible for themselves and their own decisions, but as a society, it's our (collective) responsibility to educate all our members so that they can function in a modern society, and American society is failing miserably in that regard. These basic life skills like having a bank account and managing money should be taught to kids in grade school and high school, and obviously that's not happening. I had to learn all that stuff on my own, which isn't so hard when you grow up in a middle-class household with a parent who already understands these things (my mom took me to get my own bank account (savings of course) when I was about 10 years old; this was back in the good old days of the 80s when banks didn't charge fees for every little thing), but if your parents don't understand this stuff at all, you're screwed in this society because no one's going to teach you. However, now with even poor people using the internet, maybe things will change because all this stuff can be easily looked up and read about.
Everything is more expensive when you're poor. Not just a saying, entirely true. Can rarely purchase when stuff is on sale, get late fees on everything, interest to pay, higher interest and fees because you pay interest and fees. It's like saying, because you have little money, we're going to charge you more!
Was poor once.. it sucked. You get sick more often, meaning you get more bills and miss more work because you can't afford good food. I have been clawing my way out of the hole for many years now. Almost 50% of my gross income goes to paying debts, which are mostly medical, school, car, and credit debts from not having enough money to eat so I used my credit card to not starve.
I've learned to not judge people, they tend to be victims of their own circumstances.
But more seriously, it is quite amusing since you know the same people who bash unions would throw a shit fit if they lost their weekends, 40 hour weeks, and other benefits that the average worker now takes for granted that took unions decades to get us.
I don't think any sensible person would argue that many of the things unions accomplished in years past have been unambiguously good. Furthermore a union can be an important counterweight to management excesses. My father was a union member for many years and it probably kept him employed in the face of some pretty inept management. Unions even can help make companies more productive in some cases. Conceptually I'm actually a supporter of unions.
The problem is that many unions have ceased trying to fight for what is reasonable. They aren't fighting anymore for a reasonable work week or improved safety or to get benefits in most cases. They often seem to care little about the health and competitiveness of the company. They make the (false) argument that their own actions and demands somehow cannot have a detrimental effect on the company and that the only goal of management is to screw the union members. Once things become reasonable the unions seem unwilling to drop their adversarial position. I have NEVER seen a union go to management and say, "hey, I see that our retirement costs have become a big burden that is hurting the company. How can we help?" No, instead they simply fight tooth and nail for more even when more isn't really possible. Unions quite simply haven't realized that they've won and keep fighting to the long term detriment of everyone.
If companies tried to change the 40 hour work week then unions likely would enjoy a surge in popularity because then they would be fighting a worthy cause for reasonable working conditions. When work conditions and pay are already are reasonable, unions need to recognize that they need to serve a much more limited purpose. Should management start behaving unreasonably then a union has every right and obligation to take measures to protect the union membership.
The first thing you need to get into your head is: The "Free Market" is a myth. Like a frictionless bearing it is useful only in an elementary theory. You don't get to choose if you have to pay rent and feed children and there are no other employers near you.
The Nigerian scam still works on this principle. They send you a check drawn from a foreign or at least out of state bank. You deposit it and the check clears. One business day later all of the funds are available. If you're stupid enough to send them the money, when your bank finally figures out that the check was worthless, they back-charge your account. You end up several thousand dollars negative that you have to repay out of your own pocket.
Despite the instant clearing, this process can sometimes take 8 weeks to play out.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
At mine it was $25 and that was your initial deposit. I also have to maintain a minimum monthly average balance of $25 but that value comes from all accounts you have there and has never been a problem.
Time to offend someone
and the banks have fun with the float time. If they see a check come through for a high amount that can drain the account, it will go through fast. Instead of one bounced check, that big one magically finds its way to the front of the line so that all the little checks that had not cleared yet have insufficient balance.
Right... this is the whole strong helping the weak philosophy at play here. My only statement is that the weak need to remember it's a choice for the strong to help them, not a right.
What you'll find though is pride gets in the way, when I was younger I did try to help people I didn't really know that well only to get "who is this guy and why does he thing he knows better" type attitudes / responses.
So... as a result, call me a terrible person, but I leave people to their own problems now no matter how basic, I have my own to deal with.
And when I read something like TFA, I immediately flag atm fees and know that I would mitigate them (my bank has free atm withdrawals at their atms), but passing that knowledge on? Words to the wind.
If you don't have a bank account... doesn't cashing a check cost money too?
They charged you to be a member? Neither credit union I've joined had membership fees. Generally, maintaining membership involved keeping a low balance of around $25 in my savings account with them. The two credit unions I joined were:
Kirtland Federal Credit Union (military only)
San Diego County Credit Union
sHi
Yes. As a member of the Board of Directors for an HOA, I see it all the time. Before a house in an HOA is sold, there is an inspection for violations. The results go into the package that all new homeowners get and should be presented to the new or prospective homeowners before signing. The reason for that is because the new owner becomes responsible for all violations, so the inspection is there for disclosure and as a point where the new homeowner can make sure that either the old homeowner fixes them, or the price is adjusted to deal with the extra hassle.
Many new homeowners indicate that their packages do not include the inspection report when the deadline to fix their house passes. Of course, many of them are lying about that, or simply didn't read that material. Still, in many cases, we believe that the real estate agent is either not very good at what they do, or they are purposely leaving that document out so that nothing complicates the sale. We know this because the management company has on record when a copy of the inspection has been requested and delivered. So, we know that the material has been delivered from us to the buyer's agent.
Whatever the cause, this leaves the new homeowners on the hook for potentially thousands of dollars in repairs, and there is often a deadline to get those repairs completed. As you would expect, this leads to a great deal of drama.
Word to the wise, real estate agents need to be carefully monitored, and you need to make sure you are getting all your paperwork and READING all your paperwork. They are looking to get you into a house, or to sell at all costs (depending on who they represent), and a lot of them are either bad at representing you properly, or they are alternately quite willing to screw you over to get you into a house and get their commission as fast as possible.
Being able to choose how gently you get screwed is hardly a choice.
Normally, if you take a check to the bank that issued it, they will cash it at no charge. Banks that charge for this are scumbags.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
This is The United States of America. How dare you expect anyone in this nanny-state to be responsible for their own decisions, good or bad. If you make good decisions and manage to claw your way up to the upper echelons of society, you need to pay your fair share. And if by some chance you are aren't one of the lucky few, then by god, the Federal govt will take care of you. Because bad decisions are never based on your decision making shares, but it must be someone elses fault.
21st Century Renaissance Man
I've long felt that schools have been doing a disservice to pupils since the 70's; preparing grade school kids for life should include basic money management, awareness of the state and federal tax code, family law, and the penal code. It takes an education to understand the responsibilities society places on you and the consequences of ignoring them, yet we toss our kids to the wolves as soon as they complete primary without any of that. Its really rather silly.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I don't recall anyone sitting down with me and explaining taxes, the penal code, family law (with regard to chihldren out of wedlock), and how to manage my checkbook. Other than only cursory explanations from my parents and some half-assed sex ed in school I had to figure out on my own what the implecations are of handling any of that stuff incorrectly.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Because he's definitely not an illegal alien, subject to likely being paid daily before they are dropped back off at the 7-11, and he's probably not an H1-B, where they pay your contracting company your fee, and the contracting company pays you peanuts whenever they feel like it because they have you over a barrel until you've got a Green Card.
Next step will be making the cards so they can only be used at certain stores. Welcome to the virtual company town.
That was the way workers used to get paid, with factory credit that could only be used at the official factory shop. Of course this shop was overpriced.
I'm thought there was some law about being paid in local currency now? Because if you are paid by card that comes with fees to get the cash you are not really being paid in local currency.
Do you not understand the concept of spending all the money you have, because you don't think ahead? Not understanding that some people think this way, despite the concept being repeated again and again, is almost as stupid as the mentality itself. Please accept that some people have trouble with this.
It depends on the shop. I've worked many places that paid weekly. Some shops paid me bi-weekly or on the 15th and the 30th.
Yeah, right.
Let 'em burn, eh?
No penny for the guy, eh?
I hope you find your Ayn Randian paradise soon (but make sure it is far, far away, please!)
Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men. — Mahatma Gandhi
Yeah, right.
I find vegetables and fruit from the local market cost less than just about any other kind of food. They definitely count as good food.
If I'm trying to save money I'll buy whatever is in season and going cheap and look up recipes on supercook.com where you can search by ingredient.
Cooking isn't a dead art yet :)
I've long felt that schools have been doing a disservice to pupils since the 70's; preparing grade school kids for life should include basic money management, awareness of the state and federal tax code, family law, and the penal code. It takes an education to understand the responsibilities society places on you and the consequences of ignoring them, yet we toss our kids to the wolves as soon as they complete primary without any of that. Its really rather silly.
If you got rid of Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, History, Science, P.E., and Recess we might be able to cover the U.S. tax code in K-12, although it would be woefully outdated knowledge by the time they got to college. If we started sending every kid to summer school it would make a dent in the rest of the Federal statutes. States would have to do their own statutes as extra homework and weekend sessions. I have no idea when country/city ordinances would be covered. Good idea, though.
I work in the prepaid industry.
Yah, I have a credit union with DD.
TBH, prepaid seemed pretty sleazy to me my first few years working here.
Anytime you want to gripe about prepaid debit go park in front of a check cashing store for a while.
If you have trouble finding one, they are usually between your liqueur store and a pawn shop.
Prepaid is a step up from that, an it's hard for many people to accept.
I know company payroll cards are issued to people more fortunate and they feel slighted, but nothing is free, handling cash is not free, writing checks is not free, setting up DD for employees not likely to stick around more than a year is not free. Payroll cards are a good deal for employers, I'm sorry some costs shifted to the employees, but you can always ask for DD anyway and debit cards keep a lot of people away from the pawn shop, liqueur store strip malls, they do some good :/
I find vegetables and fruit from the local market...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
Stop talking like everyone shares your privileges.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Just having an hoa is enough to make me walk away; having to deal with someone else's opinion on your house sounds like a rental.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
I don't know if you've read Rand, but that's not quite what she says.
It is perfectly alright for one to help others according to Rand. The only condition is that you do it with consideration for your own benefit. The thing most people miss is that this benefit does *not* need to be material. You can help someone because it makes you feel good. That's entirely valid according to Randian principles on the condition that you value that good feeling more than the cost of said help. That is compatible with your Gandhi quote, btw.
- OK with Rand: Giving 20 bucks to some homeless guy because you want to.
- Not OK with Rand: Giving 20 bucks to some homeless guy because his condition somehow *entitles* him to your help.
- Definitely NOT OK with Rand: Some thug(s) using force or threat of force to take that 20 bucks from you and handing it to an arbitrary group of bums they feels deserves your help. Typically as a selfish political strategy to maintain and increase that ability to use force.
Mind the frickin' laser...
I happen to know the state of New Mexico was also using this stuff a while back, for their unemployment insurance.
Posting AC because I know juicy bits. I didn't learn about this by being unemployed; I learned by knowing someone who works at their Department of Labor. Basically what happened is that Bank of America came in pushed it hard, since it's so profitable for them to take this money away from the claimants. The state doesn't resist, because paying people costs some money anyway (not just the money you're paying; I mean other overhead) and Bank of America set it up so that it cost the state of NM less, if they shafted the people. So it was a cost-savings thing, combined with "who cares what problems we're causing for others" attitude and the usual corruption that is just totally rampant and unopposed in our state govt.
What I find intersting about that last thing, is that externalizing costs is totally rational, but when you've got governments doing it, you have left the path of wisdom. Part of the reason we have government, is to fight unfair externalization.
seriously, why is the system such that the bank has to worry about bounced checks?
around here the banking system operates in such a way that you can't overdraw using your payment card(visa electron in most cases if you don't want credit). the banks don't take any risks with cheques and even if they did operate the now long buried cheque system they wouldn't have needed to give them to people they didn't want to nor would they have deposited the money before the payment cleared.
as a consequence everyone gets to have a bank account in any bank and that's where you get your social security, your salary etc. you could say it's almost(or not even almost since it's a necessity) a human right here - no matter how badly you've screwed up. the only people going without one are those who are either dodging taxes or dodging debt recovery payments.
and yes that card anyone(even with bad credit history) is good for purchasing online from pretty much anywhere that accepts visa, usable in grocery stores etc(the system is such that the electron cards are checked everytime they've used if they have balance, with most places having chip+pin readers - even the immigrant run kebab places, taxis..).
lobby for a banking system from the 1900's, I say.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Well, that is good luck for you. Here are the gory details: I had just started working for Rois Manufacturing in Philadelphia. They paid me with checks drawn on First Pennsylvania Bank. I dutifully hustled over to the Center City branch before closing time, and presented the check. They told me to get lost, because I didn't have an account there. After a period of fruitless whining, I knuckled under and opened an account with them, and they finally cashed the checks. Now how I was able to get any money to open the account, I am not sure. If I recall correctly, my wife already had an account with them, and I was able to sign the checks over to her, but only after there was enough money in her account to cover the paycheck in case it bounced. To me, what this indicates is a basic unconcern on the part of employers, who just don't want to go to the trouble to find ways to make this situation more helpful to their employees. The attitude seems to be "I gave you a legal pay check, how you get the money from it is your problem. GFY."
I've only ever seen that with "member-owned" credit unions, and in those situations the $25 is less of a fee and more a purchase of stock in the company.
FWIW, $25/share is a steal in a lot of these cases.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
It comes up every time in this situation, but it bears repeating. Living hand-to-mouth costs a bloody fortune.
=======
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socio-economic unfairness.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
or on the 15th and the 30th.
The term for that is "semi-monthly".
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
They want to lower cost, so they pass the charges to have accounting payment etc on to the employee. My ex-wife got a minimum wage job once, that paid on one of these cards. Cash withdrawl $3.
Employees in such a situation need to make a complaint with the regulators that they are being paid LESS THAN MINIMUM WAGE. That is, the fees required for them to convert their wages into a usable form must be subtracted, in determining what they are actually being paid.