But how can a fund transfer from checking to savings be covered from savings if it is bounced for "insufficient funds" in checking? I'd rather not find out. And I'm not about to give them an opportunity to show me.

Lately, they've been pulling a lot of other questionable maneuvers, too. For example, sometimes they will give me partial credit for a deposit, with the balance to be registered later. At other times they don't. They no longer send me all my canceled checks, they just send me pictures of them. Some cancelled checks are returned, though. Hmmmm. Then, they stopped giving me access to the pictures for checks older than a certain date. (But I could still get them--for a modest charge). At other times my checkbook will not balance, then suddenly it does! And it is always in "my" favor, that is, the bank says I have more money than I think I do.

The upshot is that it is difficult to keep the checkbook balanced because you are always missing key information. If you need to dispute anything, you never have all the data you need. No, I am not accusing them of fraud or felony, but they are making it harder for people to monitor their own money, and unless you are online, you don't have a bloody chance to do so. The written statements (which they beg me every month to cancel) are always out of date and next to useless. The upshot is that they don't have to engage in as many costly conflict resolutions, and in the event they are at fault due to some honest error on their part, they probably won't have to pay up as often. From that point on, the extension to the dishonest errors will evolve naturally.

It isn't necessary for them to simply refuse to cooperate with their customers and deny them information, they simply are allowing a system to evolve naturally that accomplishes the same thing part of the time with some of their customers. Some MBA somewhere has calculated the exact percentage in profit enhancement this will generate over the next X years because they know most people will get frustrated and decide to trust the bank's figures.

And by the way. Why should preferred customers (those whose bank assets exceed a certain amount) now have privileges (like free overdraft protection) that all customers used to have for free? This is just another way of saying poor people pay more for the same service.