Bank of America Debit Fees

Originally posted by Section31
reply to post by Artlicious

 

Its only a $5 fee.

When my bank started to charge me a $5 fee, checking account maintenance, I shrugged the whole thing off and paid the obligation. Bank of America did not do anything new. Banks have always charged for checking and debit card usage.

Its not a BIG deal.

So you're okay with paying to use your own money? Account maintenance? What exactly do "they" do to maintain your account? If YOU don't "maintain" a specific account balance you are charged a fee, right? So... they charge you for maintaining the account and penalize you for not maintaining your own account... think about it.

The reason so many people are upset over this is because it is OUR money! They want to charge a fee for us to use OUR money! What part of that don't people get? If banks are going to start charging fees, I'll just get a safe and keep it in my house. Don't get more than maybe .01% interest anyway.

Fer Christ's sake, this furor over a $5.00 fee is just ridiculous. The government changed the rules and said banks could not make as much money per transaction from the merchant. So the banks want to make this up with a $5.00 fee. You're going to pay one way or another, and it ain't always the banks that are the "greedy" ones. Do you think the local espresso shop is going to lower the price of their lattes because they don't pay as high transaction fees? RIGHT. I'm sure that will happen. So the bank gets the same amount of money they did before and the merchant makes more money. Who is being greedy?

Years ago I paid an $8.00 fee for checking. With Bank of America, it is free. Years ago I had to pay for checks. With Bank of America, they are free. Years ago it cost $10 a month to have online banking. With Bank of America, it's free. My overall "costs" of banking have declined drastically over the last twenty years. Even if you add a $5.00 monthly fee in there it is still less than I paid earlier.

Originally posted by schuyler
Fer Christ's sake, this furor over a $5.00 fee is just ridiculous. The government changed the rules and said banks could not make as much money per transaction from the merchant. So the banks want to make this up with a $5.00 fee. You're going to pay one way or another, and it ain't always the banks that are the "greedy" ones. Do you think the local espresso shop is going to lower the price of their lattes because they don't pay as high transaction fees? RIGHT. I'm sure that will happen. So the bank gets the same amount of money they did before and the merchant makes more money. Who is being greedy?

Years ago I paid an $8.00 fee for checking. With Bank of America, it is free. Years ago I had to pay for checks. With Bank of America, they are free. Years ago it cost $10 a month to have online banking. With Bank of America, it's free. My overall "costs" of banking have declined drastically over the last twenty years. Even if you add a $5.00 monthly fee in there it is still less than I paid earlier.

I would have thought by now, you'd be tired of "paying" a bank to use "your" money....

reply to post by schuyler


So when do the fee's become so much that YOU will say no?

If you bank with BoA and planned to do so for the next 10+ years, you will be paying an aditional $600 in bank fees, just to use your money. That should be 600 reasons to find a new bank, IMO.

BoA is charging us this fee in spite of the Fed. They don't like that they are being regulated and they are fighting back the only way they know how... by attacking their customers, the American people!

BoA is hoping that people will be too lazy to switch, they want you to see this as business as usual. They want you to blame the government! They want you to tell congress to never regulate the banks again.

But we are smarter than that.. we are not as lazy as they think and we will encourage the Fed to regulate the banks even further!!!

Save up to $600 over the next 10 years by spending 30min or less to switch banks... seems like a smart choice to me.

reply to post by schuyler


The passive attitudes of a majority of consumers is why institutions like banking and government ultimately take power and control over the masses.

Large insitutions are basically scrambling for new sources of revenue plain and simple.

U.S. banks have been looking for ways to introduce "regulations" since the financial crisis severely limited the use of overdraft and other fees as a way to make a profit.

It's true that the amendment which caps fees that banks can charge merchants for processing debit transactions has dropped, which also has the potential of costing banks billions of dollars in profit not to mention the broader operational challenges with regard to low interest rates and higher capital requirements. That along with a sluggish economy depresses loan demand.

Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, SunTrust Banks, they plan on "testing" the advantages and disadvantages of monthly debit card fees as well.

BofA is trying to find new ways to pad their profits by sticking it to its customers.

BofA card services which includes credit and debit card operations reported fee income of $1.9 billion, down 23 percent from second quarter 2010.

The thing is... if I am going to pay a fee, I expect a service in return.

reply to post by Destinyone


i am going to use my checking account for all my purchases from the start of 2012...
i have free checking because of 2 direct deposits into my account, i'm a preferred coustomer


but from what i'm gleaning is that one will need to have a minimum of $2k in monthly direct-deposits
to receive the preferred BoA credit card which will sidestep the $5 monthly deduction.


if it looks like the rules keep changing so as to get a monthly revenue flow from me--- then the Credit Union is only 5 more minutes away from the main office of BoA here in zip code 29577


i do not need the 'ease' of payment so bad as to pay $60+ a year for the banks' benefit of my direct deposits which aids their ability to leverage their sometimes opaque and unethical paper creations (frankenpaper/toxic paper)

reply to post by St Udio


To be considered for an exception to the amendment:

BofA also reported that the exceptions to the new fee will be certain customers that the bank regards as sufficiently profitable otherwise so as not to be worth annoying, such as those with a $200,000+ mortgage or an account at Merrill Lynch with balances over $20,000.

Looks like the BoA website is back up and running, for now.

And their stock is already down to $5.31.. Will it go below $5 today?

Yeah . . . Bank of America is so darn hard done by . . . they've gotta get those profits up. After all, they're ashamed at only being able to report $6.2 billion in profit.

Thugs.