Think that you're safe from annoying bank fees if you don't overdraw your account and use only your bank's ATM machines? Think again. Starting in 2012, Bank of America will charge customers $5 per month to use their debit card! It will not matter how many times you use your debit card--once or 50--but even just one swipe will activate the $5 monthly charge. If you do not use your card at all, then you won't be charged, and you can still use ATMs as much as you want, free of charge. (Right, as long as you stick to Bank of America ATMs.) But seriously, who carries cash around with them all the time and never uses a debit card?
This is outrageous. Overdraft fees are understandable, and ATM fees, albeit irritating, are something that most people are used to. But a debit card fee? What gives, Bank of America? Apparently the implementation of these new fees involves new rules that limit the revenue banks will be able to get from merchants; soon, banks can charge retailers every time customers use their debit cards. Banks used to charge an average fee of 44 cents, and now the maximum fee is only 21 cents. This seemingly little change will cost the banking industry billions of dollars. Many financial institutions complained, but the Federal Reserve stood firm. So who has to pay for the banks losing money? The customers do. Doesn't seem fair, does it?
Bank of America will officially notify their customers of this change "at least 30 days before it takes effect" in January--perhaps enough time for people to start thinking about switching banks. However, other banks have also been toying with the idea of introducing fees for debit card swipes. But Bank of America is one of the first major institutions to announce that it will make this a reality. Many people use Bank of America for its convenience, but will that convenience factor be worth the extra $60 a year just to use your debit card?
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Comments: 32
Price caps never work. Capping the price of something distorts the market, often causing that something to disappear. In other words, price caps CREATE shortages and/or cause prices on uncapped items to go up.
Since all banks are in this position, look for other fee changes. My bank recently raised the monthly cost of checking account by 20% for example as well as a lot of other fees, most of which are obscure.
Of course they work, for what theyare designed to do. No one wants to put price caps or controls of things, they only do so to fix a larger problem. Your market blather is what never works, there is no free market, there never was, economics is not a hard and fast science, and the market is not a natural phenomenon. The market should serve people, people should never have to endure the disasters when the problems that always arise cause boom and bust.
And there is no shortage of ATMs either by the way.
I'll cross this bank of my list. I have been looking to open a new account. Wachovia before it was bought by Wells Fargo, killed with with their "free" account. They unlike other banks do not count a federal check as cash, our refund... and took about two weeks to clear it. Bounce fees made me realize they were not the bank to deal with. And Wells Fargo sounds so, so American.. look close it's owned by Deutschland Bank... hmmm.
Yeah, that's because they're still paying on that bad $4 billion buyout of Countrywide~or should I say, we're paying!
Certain simple things or important things like the mail should be nationalized, or socialized or whatever you want to call it to keep prices down and quality high.
Wonder when the DOJ will investigate B of A for antitrust?
Not as long as that BofA money is needed to get incumbents re-elected.
We need publicly financed elections in this country - period.
But ... I wonder, why? There needs to be some reason, like they are upping the level of service or adding some value to their product ... but just to raise fees because they want money and they can really makes me very angry.
I have been with BofA since I opened an account there as a kid ... so it is difficult for me to just up and leave, but I am thinking about it and looking around for a better alternative, because I am sick of these corporations screwing the American middle class blatantly.
Can anyone recommend a good banking alternative?
The way business is supposed to work in America is that the service level goes up and the costs go down ... but now that everything is privatized and political, the prices go up on those who are not super rich, while those who are investors and managers get to vote themselves raises, and bonuses, and then contribute to poltiicians who help them to double that the next terms.
This is not America anymore that I recognize.
...
> Altho you apparantly want the Government to control everything
Flinging out canned, unoriginal, hostile, incoherent statements full of sarcasm is not really intelligent or worthy of a response.
What an asinine comment, everything that has been tried has also failed, so as usual no point to the right wing point except to shut down an intelligent discussion with baloney.
Also low on reading comprehension as well, I do not support price caps just like I do not support war, but sometimes there is no intelligent alternative ... something you might not understand.
> than trying to change this one, to be like them - why not simply reside there will you would be happier?
Another such idiotic statement I don't know why I bother to respond, and I probably won't to your next horking of nonsense.
My right as an American is to try to change my country, tell it to women who used to not be able to vote or the slaves who where brought here legally. Your whole spectrum or response is flatter than Rush Limbaugh's sense of humor. By the way, fascists and tyrants are always trying to take over the country they live in, and they do it by amassing a lot of money and then corrupting the government, like your right wing friends are doing here. But they have already done it on other countries as well to remove democracy and install a tyrant, now you want to support them with your nonsense to do it here as well.
Why not quit wasting people's time with your foolishness, God certainly does not want you to be stupid, or to try to fool or trick your fellow Americans.