Debit Card Fees are Coming to your bank-but only if you’r regular customer
Q.: How does a big national bank take taxpayers' hard-earned cash and slap them in the face with it? A.: Accept a bailout from the federal government, but then cry poorhouse, and charge your customers outrageous, unnecessary fees. The latest: Bank of America is going to start charging millions of customers a $5 monthly fee to use theirdebit cards (on purchases, not ATM transactions). No wonder there are protests on Wall Street!!
The banks are boo-hooing, because they say they need to charge us to recoup moolah they're going to lose when new government regulations (which take effect tomorrow) start capping what they can charge merchants for debit-card transactions. So, because they can't gouge business owners, they figure they'll gouge US. And by the way, more affluent people who hold "premium accounts" won't be affected by these fees.
The regular bank customer with a basic checking account and debit card is the one who is going to have to cough up the extra dough. Another way middle-class, hard-working people are getting totally thrown under the bus. Despicable!
While Bank of America's new fee is higher than most, it's not just them nor is this a new way the banks have decided to nickel and dime customers. Wells Fargo is going to charge a $3 fee for some debit-card customers in Nevada, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, and Georgia, starting October 14. J.P. Morgan has been testing a $3 fee since February. Even SunTrust -- which I would have thought was a smaller, more local, and consumer-friendlier bank -- has begun charging a $5 monthly fee for "unlimited debit-card purchases."
There's nothing about this that's okay. The argument that banks are just businesses that need to turn a profit does not hold water here; the truth is that they're simply not doing business in a just, fair way. As Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) put it:
After years of raking in excess profits off an unfair and anticompetitive interchange system, Bank of America is trying to find new ways to pad their profits by sticking it to its customers. It's overt, unfair, and I hope their customers have the final say.
The only silver lining in all of this is that I think it might just start to tick enough of us off that we'll FINALLY take action and move our money from these thieving institutions. I had been planning to get the hell away from Bank of America for a while now, but this is really the last straw for me personally.
Anyone who cares about being respected as a consumer should see it that way, too. Given the enormity of this crisis, protest is inevitable, but the first step has to be vowing not to do business with these cheating banksters. It's time to switch to local banks that won't perpetually abuse us.
Image via David Shankbone/Flickr
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