I’m not sure I follow. They are trying to do a magic trick where they pay $1 and they get infinite money in return?
You have to realize that people who are easily grifted think it must be easy to grift. True grifting takes a degree of thoughtfulness and intelligence (I didn’t say much).
They get grifted so easily they’re able to grift themselves with these half-formed ideas.
Economists hate this one weird trick!
Yuuuuup.
Have… Have they never had a card declined for insufficient funds?
Because that is surely a thing. Sometimes banks are extra dicks and let the charge(s) through to save the cardholder from ‘embarrassment’ but then tack on an insufficient funds fee to every single charge separately. That they allowed. Knowing you had no money.
Maybe that doesn’t happen anymore, but it sure as fuck happened to me.
When I was in my early twenties, I opened a savings account and the banker didn’t tell me that the amount that I was depositing was bellow the minimum balance. I was instantly dinged. At that age, I wasn’t confident enough to call bullshit. I ate the penalty.
Today, I would demand a refund and I’d politely make it clear that I was taking my business elsewhere because the bank obviously didn’t have proper ethics training. I’d do it in such a way as to diplomatically put that person’s job at risk. If they didn’t get fired for ripping me off, they’d for sure be on notice with their boss.
Banks are so corrupt that they get away with all kinds of evil. But not at the lowly level of a peon in a branch. That I might tell friends and family about the experience might not protect the “little person” on the front lines. Execs can get away with fucking murder.
the amount that I was depositing was bellow the minimum balance
So they charged you not for owing them money, but for being too poor to have an account with them?