conversation: User (pdx_beyond): "I've always been careful with how I use my credit cards so I've never seen a cash advance fee before. I'm not sure what's happening and if I should argue it with my bank. Here's the situation:\n\nBack in October I used my US Bank credit card to purchase a flight for approx $350. Plans changed and I got the flight refunded in full to the same card. Since I had a 0 balance on the card at that time of refund, I now had $350 dollars over my credit limit available. \n\nI would have just used my credit card as usual to bring my account back to a net 0 but I had just gotten a new credit card with a stipulation that I had to make such and such amount of purchases in 90 days to get a cash back reward so I had decided to put all my purchases on that card and just withdraw the $350 dollars from my US bank credit card. So that's exactly what I did. I went to the US Bank ATM and did the withdraw but now I see a $12 cash advance fee on the account.\n\nMaybe I'm not understanding the term "cash advance" properly but it seems strange to be charged a fee in this situation. It's not really an advance since the withdraw didn't take from my credit limit availability. Should I bother contacting my bank to have it waived or am I just not understanding the nature of this fee?"
  Self: "You used your credit card at an ATM to get cash. That is exactly what a cash advance is. There is no special condition that it's not a cash advance if your current balance is negative. \n\nCall, beg, don't argue, you are not in the right, but they might still refund the fee as a courtesy. Then you can ask them what are the options for cashing out your negative balance. Most likely they can send you a check. "
  User (pdx_beyond): "Thank you for your help :)"
  