My Dad had an interesting story about what happened to him this past weekend.  He made an electronic payment of $49.99 USD for his Sprint cellphone bill.  When he checked the status of his checking account, he owed the bank $23,000 USD for covering a $49,990 USD overdraft by Sprint.  He jawboned Sprint to death as he normally does when something goes wrong, and the money was returned to his account.  Now he's arguing with the bank over a $30 USD overdraft charge for the regular phone bill that came in while his account was in the red.  Bad enough that Sprint misplaced a decimal point, but why did the bank accept such an outrageous amount in the first place?

29 February 2007 @ 7:30PM Update: Sprint still wants $49,990 USD from my Dad's checking account as they charged him for a second time.  After another jawboning phone call where he was put on hold for a short 47 minutes, he got his money back.  The bank was kind enough to let my Dad put a stop payment on the electronic payment without charging him for it.  No wonder The New York Times is reporting that Sprint posted a $29.5 billion lost for the quarter.  Senior citizens like my Dad won't let them keep the extra change.  The only reason why I don't have problems with my own Sprint account is that I still write paper checks for the utilities.