Advance America Rip-Off

I am not sure I understand? The check was written for $240 but when it was cashed $400 came out of your bank account?

Get a copy of the check and dispute it with your bank ASAP!

Good gosh!! Go to your bank asap!! Fill out a formal dispute against those idiots, they forged your check and should be prosecuted for it, I bet your local branch manager can advise you on that!

Wow, we are jumping to conclusions that AA did something wrong!!! Unless I am missing something, the mamager even stated that the check was written for $240. It sounds to me like a person at the bank encoded the check wrong and therefore debited the OP's account for the wrong amount. A simple call to the bank will allow them to pull up the copy of the check and easily correct the problem. The big surprise here is that the banks proofing dept did not catch the error.

No big surprise really. Happens all the time. More often than not the encoding error happens with the merchant.

I would call your bank first and dispute it- do you keep carbons? It's possible your own bank or the bank Advance America was using encoded the information wrong. I had a similar thing happen years ago where a merchant cleared one of my checks for a different amount than what was written. Only that incident was in my favor; they cleared it for an amount less than what the check was written for.

What state are you located in? All the Advance America's here in my part of California only send a check for deposit if you default on the loan. Otherwise, you have to go into their storefront and "buy back" your check with cash. I assumed this was the practice of all their branches.

Just because they sent the check through does not really state a default.

You are supposed to go in a buy back the check but there were tiimes I could not make it to the store and I had the money in my bank so I just let them go ahead and deposit it. The check cleared so the laon was paid.

The never gave me any issues about it but I also never had more money taken then what was supposed to come out.

I think a true default is when there is not enough money to cover the check.

That is very true. AA allows you to do both.

That's why I said "in my part". The branches I have ever dealt with will call your mercilessly if you do not show up on your scheduled date to "buy back" the check and even if they get a hold of you, they still insist you come in and buy it back with cash. Only in my experience ( or rather, in the experience of accquaintances using the same branches I used ) if they couldn't get a hold of you about your missed "appointment" for 2-3 weeks, did they finally send it for deposit. I never said they defaulted or must have defaulted. I was saying that I wasn't aware that Advance America would deposit a check in other circumstances.

Definately sounds like an error on the bank's part in processing--but a call to the bank is definately in order. They can find the copy of the check and see what it was keyed in for compared to what it was written for--and you will get your $160 back with any fees refunded, I'm sure.
My experience with Advance America was that I would always get a call the day before my payday as a reminder to come in and pay off, which was a pain.

It might be a region thing or maybe just the difference in managers. Maybe state laws?

Two of the store fronts, Check n Go and Advance, never called me. They just waited a couple days and then deposited the check if I didn't come in.

Check into Cash did call though. I think the branch that was near me relied on the cash being brought back to the store to keep their till stocked.

Probably the bank's error. I have used Advance here in missouri several times and one time the bank debited my account for 300 instead of 235, but a quick call and verification fixed it promptly.

I have a question if i have a payday loan out for 400 dollars in alabama and the account i used to open the loan got closed due to someone using my checkbook and i want to mak epayment arrangement but if they dont let me do so can they have me arrested?

No just explain to them you ecountered fraud and you want to make advanced payment arrangements.