Somewhere a bank executive in an office building near Wall Street was reading the Declaration of Independence, when a light bulb lit up over his head as he read the line “…all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” In short, if you’re used to something, you’ll probably suffer with it rather than expend the effort to change it.
I had a WTF moment last night during a broadcast of NBC’s Nightly News broadcast when dependable Brian reported that beginning Thursday, Bank of America would begin charging customers a monthly $5 fee just for using their debit cards… In fact before I realized I’d done it, I jumped up and yelled “WHAT???” at the top of my lungs (scaring the hell out of my cat sleeping peacefully beside me.)
The only thing that immediately came to mind was to wonder if Bank of America had recently hired suicidal financial advisors away from Netflix. Upon further research (in fear that my own bank was next,) I discovered that Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase are plotting to do the same. This is definitely going to cause a customer backlash akin to the one that resulted in the Durbin amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act that limits the fees that banks can charge stores etc. for debit card purchases. In fact, this is probably the result of that amendment. Banks are famous for having a reserve of lawyers who go over federal regulations in advance to find ways around them before they’re even signed into law, so we naïve Americans should’ve seen this coming (refer back to the first paragraph of this article.)
After all Wall Street execs can’t survive without their 7-figure bonus checks every year.
For a decade or so now, the banks have plotted to do away with paper money, turning America into a plastic society. As a result, most Americans pay with debit cards for everything from a quick hamburger on the fly at the neighborhood McDonald’s to movie tickets with the family at the local theater. The banks loved this concept because they used to be able to get away with charging insane overdraft fees on each and every transaction if you momentarily lost track of your balance, and at the end of the month those last 12 morning coffees at Burger King on your way to work ran $35 each because you were overdrawn by a mere 16 cents; and they joyfully got away with it because at the time Wall Street owned and operated the GOP-led congress that made it all legal!
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - roger nowosielski
One wonders why this development wasn't foreseen and countermanded by the recent commission headed by Elizabeth Warren.
2 - Jet Gardner
Indeed
3 - roger nowosielski
Which is why you can't trust the government, Jet -- it's always too little and too late.
4 - Jet Gardner
From your mouth to god's ear... or just god's debit card?
5 - Anonymous
BofA is screwed.
6 - Jet Gardner
Let's hope so
7 - Jet Gardner
and they have no one to blame but themselves
8 - Lynn Voedisch
The day Chase starts whalloping me with a debit card user fee is the day I start writing checks for everything again. Those bastards!
9 - Jet Gardner
Remember standing in grocery lines and groaning every time someon pulled a checkbook out ahead of you?
10 - El Bicho
I thought the subtitle would be "The politics of...oooh...feeling mad."
11 - Jet Gardner
Oh great, now that song's going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the night.
12 - Jet Gardner
My sister in Oregon says Wells Fargo is going to begin charging $3 a month for hers
13 - Miss Bob Etier
The banks had the rates they are allowed to charge customers by twenty cents. Some banks are planning on charging $5/month. I don't use my debit card 25 times a month, so--clearly--they aren't trying to break even, they're trying to break us.
14 - Miss Bob Etier
Oops..."had the rates...CUT"
15 - El Bicho
After your title, now we're even, Jet ;)
16 - Jet Gardner
My heavens... for a moment I thought that was thunder
17 - zingzing
"BofA is screwed."
ha! as if. they know exactly what they're doing. push the consumers off the debit and onto the credit. $5 a month isn't much. but if it's enough to push some fool into credit card debt, it's priceless to the banks.
18 - Jet Gardner
They're trying to get us pissed Zing so the teabagger/GOP can repeal the law that allows banks to charge a $35 overdraft fee for each incodent... that's anti-business
19 - fcetier
Thanks for sharing this well written report. Rated UP!
20 - Jet Gardner
Thanks Chip, after my bankruptcy, I discovered that it felt just as good to swipe a debit card through the machine as a credit card, and I didn't have to pay interest... and no fees-so I started using the damned thing for everything almost second nature.
I was being serious at my outrage when I heard the news report.
Now the banks are using the excuse that they have to make up somehow for the income the lost when they couldn't charge outrageous overdraft fees.
Poor things, they're only pulling in 4 billion instead of 6 billion. We should get a collection together for them...
21 - Glenn Contrarian
My wife and I were BofA customers for twenty years - and we just closed our accounts two months ago. Whenever my retirement check came in on a Saturday, BofA would not allow it to be credited to my account until the following Monday, and the same thing went for holidays and three-day weekends. Of course they were trying to get every last penny of interest.
So now I'm with Navy Federal Credit Union, and although their online banking isn't as useful as BofA's was, at least I can get my money when it comes in.
22 - troll
...zing - I suspect #5 refers to hacking action against BoA's site...might be prudent for account holders to move to a credit union
23 - troll
...as Glenn has
24 - Jet Gardner
Glenn, it's a ploy to let you think you have money in your account when you don't so they can charge you overdraft fees.
I've heard dozens of reports like yours where a large check is witheld for days letting smaller ones accumulate for multiple fees. They pulled it on a soldier in Iraq who was charged 125 or more overdraft fees for cups of coffee costing him more than $3000.
25 - Glenn Contrarian
And Jet -
We just had our bankruptcy finalized this past Tuesday, and our foreclosure is on October 25th...
...and you know what? My wife and I have had precisely zero arguments about it. And just like you, we've discovered over the past five years of trying to avoid this situation that using a debit card feels as good as a credit card - heck, it feels better, because we don't owe jack on what we buy with it.
But I agree with you as to why they're starting to charge the debit card fees - at least NFCU doesn't do that - yet.