Do you think BofA will just say "never mind" about the

[gateley]

$5 fee -- what a firestorm! Good. :evilgrin:

[glowing]

1. It would be a great reason to close any account with them if one had not already done so.

[gateley]

Yeah, I'm actually surprised at the number of people I know

(who think much like I do) who still have accounts there. My brother is one and the excuse he uses is the ATM is right down the street. Wonder what he'll be saying now. :evilgrin:

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. As Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) put it:

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 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
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.


http://thestir.cafemom.com/in_the_news/126727/debit_card_fees_adds_more

[City Lights]

3. Hell no! They need that money to improve the speed of their website! eom

[L0oniX]

12. LMFAO

[truedelphi]

4. What Five dollar fee? n/t

[SheilaT]

5. Bof A is going to charge $5 per month

for using their debit card. If you use it only at the ATM, no charge. Any month you don't use it, no charge.

Many people use a debit card in lieu of cash, even for very small purchases. Personally, I don't have an ATM card and am completely unswayed by claims of how wonderful they are. However, many others use them all the time.

The news articles I've been skimming about this keep on saying that BofA is simply joining other banks in doing this, but I haven't yet stumbled across who the other banks are.

[truedelphi]

8. Debit cards are only good for the rich.

The default on all debit cards used to be that if you didn't have the money in your account, your purchase would be declined. The reverse is now true.

So let's say you think you have $ 8.42 in yr account. And actually you would, but yr bank just decided to charge $ 1 a call for the 800 number account information service. You didn't read the notice because the bank is always sending you notices - about their Christmas club, their vacation club etc.


So since you used this service twice in the last 24 hours, and you don't realize that you only have $ 6.42.

So your $ 8 purchase is approved, as a convenience, and now you are accessed $ 33 NSF charge for being a bit over a dollar on the card amount. Great! - now you're over your limit on the same day three checks go through. They would have gone through fine, except for the purchase being approved that triggered the $ 33 NSF fee.

Now you owe an additional $ 99 - all for less than a $ 2 overdraft.
You are going to pay $ 99 for the fact that the bank changed their policies. Plus the original $ 33.

For money they will have returned to them in 48 hours. This is an interest rate of over 82,000% !
(It happened to me.)

They also do a thing of sometimes putting a "hold" on your money. So you put fifteen bucks worth of gas on your card, and they "hold" seventy dollars of your money for three days, just because they want to.

Again, with this hold in place, a lot of poorer households find themselves facing a lot of unnecessary bank penalty fees.

[SheilaT]

13. I know. My son did not realize (nor did I) that his

debit card would not be declined if not enough money in the account, that instead he'd be hit with an overdraft fee. This was ten years ago. It turned me totally against debit cards, even though I know there are many out there who like them a lot. I use cash for all of my day-to-day purchases, and a credit card for large amounts.

What I like best about carrying cash is that it's much easier to keep track of my spending. Each week I take out a sum of money from the ATM (no service charge there) and divide it up into envelopes labelled as so: grooming, cat, gas, clothing, entertainment, and miscellaneous. The amount that remains in my wallet is essentially for groceries.

It's been my observation that a lot of people who use the debit card all the time instead of cash or checks, always seem to spend all of their money, and think it's simply not possible to save. I particularly notice this in the younger people (20-somethings) at work. The debit card makes it much to easy to simply get whatever you want, without paying a whole lot of attention to what's actually in the account. Yeah, go ahead and get that latte or the lipstick or the drive-through order at McDonald's. It doesn't seem like real money, and then you wonder why you never have enough.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

19. I have my savings account linked to my checking.

If I overdraft, money is pulled out of the savings automatically to balance the account.
It's pretty awesome.

[truedelphi]

21. That doesn't help someone who is very poor.

If you have a steady job, and enough to deal with setting up such an account, it is rather cool.

But if you are poor, it's just the thing of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

25. Oh we are very poor. We rob Peter to pay Paul all the time.

And it's usually only a few dollars here and there so it works. I try to keep 20 bucks in the savings at all times just in case.
Duckie

[RebelOne]

28. Same here. It is better to be safe than sorry. n/t

[SheilaT]

29. He did not have a savings account at the time.

He'd started college, and this was his checking account for school -- he was halfway across the country from us.

He made the kind of dumb, kid mistakes that he shouldn't have, no one should, but are all too easy to do.

And of course the kind of overdraft protection you've got, linked to savings, is absolutely the best. I don't have that, but every so often I transfer some money electronically from my savings account to the checking account to be absolutely certain no checks or electronic bill-pay will bounce.

[tammywammy]

14. You have to opt-in to allow the overdraft for debit cards. n/t

[truedelphi]

15. No not here in the state of California. It's state by state,

According to laws in each state.

After hearing of this experience of mine, in the response above, when a friend of mine began a business account, he explained that he did not want to have any overdraft amounts automatically approved!

And he was told repeatedly that there was simply no way to create an ATM card that would allow it to be that way.

Then about a year later, when he wasn't feeling well - he ran up three overdrafts in a row.

So they suspended his account. When he made good on those NSF items, he was told they would draw up a new account at the bank. And guess what! Due to his behavior, he was reprimanded and told, you can't have a card like you had the last time around - you will not be allowed to purchase anything ever for the amount over what you have in the bank.

The exact policy he had requested - but only allowed him once he became a "tainted customer" in the eyes of the bank!

[tammywammy]

17. It's federal law. You must opt-in to allow debit card overdrafts now. n/t

[truedelphi]

20. Good to know. Then it's changed in the last

36 months. This happened four and a half years ago.

[tammywammy]

22. July 1, 2010 was when the rule became effective

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/your-money/credit-and-debit-cards/10overdraft.html

[Occulus]

23. No, you don't.

[tammywammy]

24. Yes, you do.

As of July 1, the Federal Reserve will require that banks obtain a customer’s consent before they can charge them overdraft fees for A.T.M. transactions and debit purchases; many banks now automatically enroll customers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/your-money/credit-and-debit-cards/10overdraft.html

http://www.federalreserve.gov/consumerinfo/wyntk_overdraft.htm


I know I received something from my credit union last year asking if I wanted to opt-in to the overdraft program. I declined.

[abelenkpe]

6. new monthly 5 dollar fee for using your debit card. nt

[Fire Walk With Me]

7. After all the recent films and television shows about vampires, how can anyone be surprised by this?

Edit: Got it: Bank of America isn't sparkly.

[louslobbs]

9. If corporations were truly people they might, but since they're just profit making machines with no

emotions or feelings, I'd say probably not. Even if they did it now, it would only be to protect profits that they are afraid they could lose because of all of the upset they created with their $5 (theft) fee issue. When will some people start to get it, these corporations are not our friends and they don't care about us, they are not People and the only thing they strive for is cold hard profit. For instance, State Farm is not "a good neighbor" they're a profit making insurance company, just watch what happens if you try to make a claim, watch the wall your "good neighbor" starts to build to try and keep you away from them and you are not in "good hands" with Allstate, the only thing their hands do is take your money, try prying some of that money loose from those "good hands" if you should have to make a claim. BofA is a profit making financial institution and a criminal one at that.
Lou

[Sherman A1]

10. They might want to check in with Netflix and see

how that price increase thing worked out for them.....

[L0oniX]

11. SunTrust ...doing the same thing ...mean while others are advertising no fee.

Guess where I am going to go? ...the no fee check card bank.

[AsahinaKimi]

16. I heard its worse than that...

5 dollars a month, and 27 cents per purchase.

[KharmaTrain]

18. Other Banks Are Going To Follow Suit...

The house always wins when it comes to a bank. We've already read of people with bad credit having troubles moving to another bank or credit union. The banksters need to beef up their profits as they fend off the possibility of regulation...it's a seige mentality going on. They're still dealing with billions in bad loans and someone's gonna pay for it...one transaction at a time.

What "outrage" will soon subside as the banks know they can do as they please...especially in an election year when both parties are constantly calling for donations.

[lonestarnot]

26. Fuck no! Those assholes love our money as long as we keep giving it to them.

[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

30. They won't.....too stupid

They'll claim "only a few" customers pulled their money in response and use a bunch of buzzwords to make it sound better. Then in about two years they'll raise the fee to $10, citing all the people who pulled their money in response as a reason. They suck.

[MurrayDelph]

31. If you have a credit card

then debit cards are a bad deal, anyway.

I realize there are folks who do not qualify for credit cards and have no choice. To them I suggest finding a credit union for the source of debit card.

More and more places are paying off their "rebates" in debit cards. Even the state of California is now paying their unemployment insurance payments in debit cards (and, God help us, they are from BofA!). When I get those payments, I drain them immediately.

The rebate cards can't expire per se, but they start decreasing value of remaining balance.

Also, if someone rips off your credit card (or clones the magnetic strip), you call the bank, tell them "that wasn't me" and you're off the hook until they can prove otherwise. If someone rips or clones your debit card and you call the bank and say "that wasn't me," you're screwed until YOU can prove it.

[kcass1954]

32. I have a plan that'll be more expensive....

for them.

I'm going to use a credit card for my purchases. Once or twice a week, I'll gather my receipts, log on to BOA's free bill-pay, and send a check out to the bank that issued the credit card (not BOA).