5 years ago it was necessary for me to spend long periods of time in Canada where I used my Wachovia debit card regularly. Every day or so I would go online and check my account to see if ACH wires hit and to verify charges etc. One day after making many debit card charges exceeding a few thousand dollars (well within my balance incidentally) i visited my online account to see that I was overdrawn. Delving further I noticed that not only was the timing of the purchases different from my receipts but that there were duplicate charges from each "vendor" that differed by a few cents each. The overdraft fees exceed $500.00 but the real problem was the duplicate hits. I called Wachovia and after creeping up the IQ quotient of customer service reached a supervisor. I explained to him that I was well versed in "exchange arbitrage" and could plainly see what they were doing, i.e settling the exchange rate by double charging - once at the Canadian rate and then at the settled US rate. I was immediately refunded.

Ironically, my wife was constantly overdrawn (she too was up in Canada) in her personal account and too embarrassed to mention it to me even though she carefully manged her accounts. When I told her of my experience she told me of her problem and asked if I would look at her account. Long story short - Wachovia returned over $1,600.00 in over draft fees (they could only go back 60 days or it would have been more) after I called the aforementioned supervisor.

I marvel to this day how much those bastards stole from people unable to contesst them.