Posted on 11/14/2011 4:00:12 AM PST by Cardhu
Even as Bank of America and other major lenders back away from charging customers to use their debit cards, many banks have been quietly imposing other new fees.
Need to replace a lost debit card? Bank of America now charges $5 — or $20 for rush delivery.
Deposit money with a mobile phone? At U.S. Bancorp, it is now 50 cents a check.
Want cash wired to your account? Starting in December, that will cost $15 for each incoming domestic payment at TD Bank. Facing a reaction from an angry public and heightened scrutiny from regulators, banks are turning to all sorts of fees that fly under the radar. Everything, it seems, has a price.
“Banks tried the in-your-face fee with debit cards, and consumers said enough,” said Alex Matjanec, a co-founder of MyBankTracker.com. “What most people don’t realize is that they have been adding new charges or taking fees that have always existed and increased them, or are making them harder to avoid.”
Banks can still earn a profit on most checking accounts. But they are under intense pressure to make up an estimated $12 billion a year of income that vanished with the passage of rules curbing lucrative overdraft charges and lowering debit card swipe fees. In addition, with lending at anemic levels and interest rates close to zero, banks are struggling to find attractive places to lend or invest all the deposits they hold. That poses another $8 billion drag.
Put another way, banks would need to recoup, on average, between $15 and $20 a month from each depositor just to earn what they did in the past, according to an analysis of the interest rate and regulatory changes on checking accounts by Oliver Wyman, a financial consulting firm.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
$85 and $115
Fair enough, they should see what I charge for my services.
What’s the difference between a wired deposit and a direct deposit? Everybody wants you to go to paperless deposits and now you get hit with extra fees anyway.
I hate paying fees as much as anyone else does, but the banks are really in the difficult position of trying to run themselves as a business even while their customers think of them as a public utility where their services should be just about free.
Yup!
Like everything else they do, now the responsible people have to pay for the losers on society.
If you dont want the fees then dont do business with banks.
...government to follow suit.
The secret is to find a different bank. Unless you live in the sewer of a very large city it should not be that hard.
How do you do that? I have an online account with my C.U. but can't find a port on my computer to stuff cash in. Transfer from account to account, yes.
I’ve noticed changes in my favorite bank, who used to go out of their way to avoid charging you. They USED to cash the smallest checks first, to avoid the bounce-after-bounce death, but not anymore.
I get charged if I do a paper deposit. More than six a month and it is a $5 fee/
ever heard of a credit union. DOH!
Jumping in, there is another alternative to a bank.
If you have an account with one of the brokerage firms, they will provide a debit card free and pay the ATM fees for withdrawals from anywhere. Deposits are made direct electronically. The costs to you are zero. They will also provide paper checks.
The thought that must be remembered is that money is not paper. Money is electrons on an electronic ledger. If you learn to move electrons around, you do not need paper.
I was thinking the same thing.
Time to go talk to the banker...
My bank has just told me that it is going to charge me fees to send me a monthly statement with pictures of my checks. In other words if I want a paper trail, I have to pay for it. Is this common?
I am going to call around.
By Daniel Willis
The Times
© Copyright 2011, Bay Area News Group
Posted: 11/05/2011 12:01:00 AM PDT
Updated: 11/05/2011 06:01:54 PM PDT
On Saturday, I closed all my accounts at Chase Bank. I didn’t do this because I’m a protester or a self-styled revolutionary. I didn’t do it for political reasons. I transferred my money out of Chase because it’s my duty as a capitalist.
Capitalism, at its core, is economic democracy. The analogy isn’t perfect, of course — it’s certainly not one person, one vote — but the basic concept is true. Every time you spend any money, you’re casting a vote for that business to survive and grow instead of competing businesses.
In most cases, this serves as incentive for the business you don’t vote for to improve their product. If two restaurants are next door to each other, for example, you’re going to eat at the one with the best food. The other will see the empty tables and improve its menu. The first restaurant, in turn, has to improve to maintain its lead. In the end, you, as a connoisseur of fine cuisine, win.
Banks don’t have a tangible product. Interest rates are negligible for checking and savings accounts if they exist at all, so with a couple minor exceptions such as smartphone apps and ATMs that accept checks, they’re a generic service. That means the distinguishing features of any given bank are its fees. Chase has, over the course of this year, gone from not charging me a fee for my checking account to charging $5 per month and, currently, $10 per month. My savings account incurs a fee as well.
By keeping these accounts open, I’m implicitly giving Chase my permission to invest and earn a return off my savings. This means I’m paying Chase about $200 per year for the privilege of letting them earn money off my money. I’ve come to realize that this is my fault. By paying these fees while other banks don’t charge them, I’ve been endorsing them, removing the bank’s incentive to improve its value. If you’re also paying these essentially voluntary fees to Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo or a long list of others, it’s your fault as well. By paying them, we’re telling banks that they don’t have to bother to do better. We’re casting our votes in favor of paying hundreds of dollars per year unnecessarily.
I’m done letting one of the core principles of capitalism wither away because of my inaction. I’m moving my money and casting my vote for any of the numerous local banks and credit unions that don’t charge monthly fees and, in some cases, even refund other banks’ ATM fees. The minor inconvenience of opening and closing accounts is a small price to pay to help make sure that the system works as intended.
Since I was closing my accounts anyway, I did it on Bank Transfer Day and it felt good. Really good. If we all transfer our money into small banks and credit unions in the next few weeks, the collective action will be harder to write off as due to anything but customer satisfaction. It will be our Economic Election of 2011.
The system has a mechanism to improve itself. Our economy is designed to constantly provide us with lower costs and better service. It’s well past time to put that mechanism into action. Go to www.moveyourmoneyproject.org to find a local bank or credit union and do your part for capitalism.
Daniel Willis is a database producer at the Bay Area News Group.
Yes all banks are increasing fees it seems. Mine didnt used to charge for those things but its starting to add them fee.
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