I'm not sure that a bank can "rearrange" your withdrawals. I know that it may appear as if that is what is happening, but I think that there aren't enough tellers/clerks to watch each persons account close enough to do that; but banks are tiered so that once a fee is applied to ones account, generally, the fee will throw off a very close balance. By that I mean, if you are running your balance that close, one small misstep will send your account into a fee loop, and into the red. Most banking is now done electronically; the bank who holds your mortgage probably submits your check to an electronic clearing house as opposed to the old method of sending a check out physically. There are still some corporations which use the old method of cashing your check. But most companies that receive a large number of remittances no longer wait for that old method. Electronic clearing houses operate pretty much 24 hours a day - kind of like an automatic deposit to an account does - an electronic deposit to your account may be available at midnight on your payday rather than be subject to waiting rules for availability. I hope I've explained it well enough for you.... I don't work in financial corporations any longer, but I still try to keep as informed about the functioning of them as possible.

All checks are posted in a batch and they can obviously be sorted so large checks come first for a better chance of an overdraft. Then all the smaller checks bounce. I am pretty sure that practice has stopped and banks do smaller checks first. They would lose all their customers if it got out they were doing it the first way.

I know Bank of America does them largest-smallest, which does generate the maximum number of overdrafts possible. They also just started hitting people with an additional fee if their bank account is 'in the red' for more than 5 days. So if someone goes over and doesn't have the money to bring their account back into the positive within 5 days, they get pushed even further into the negative. I understand that banks dont want people to go over, but I really don't see why they feel the need to try to crush people who are already broke.