TCF adjusts options on overdraft fees

TCF Bank is adjusting its overdraft policy. Beginning in March, customers will be offered two options for handling overdraft charges.

The bank says a number of customers were unhappy with TCF late last year instituting a policy to assess customers a fee of $28 a day for overdrawing an account. The bank will now let customers return to a $35 overdraft fee for each instance.

Some customers found the daily charge cost them more than the per-item charge, said TCF spokesman Jason Korstange. That's because they'd let an overdraft linger for longer than a day.

"If the next day they didn't come in and make it good, then they would have another $28 because their account was still overdrawn," Korstange said. "We're giving them back the old option or the new, whichever they prefer."

TCF says the daily overdraft fee prompted some customers to leave the bank, but declines to report how many. TCF's fee income fell by about $10 million in the last three months of 2011. Much of that income comes from overdraft charges.

"We had some attrition, more than we wanted. And so that's why we're offering this other account. It was higher than normal," Korstange said. "You don't collect any fees if you don't have a customer."