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Bank of America to charge monthly fee to debit card users

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Re: Bank of America to charge monthly fee to debit card users

#71

Post by rsuttongee »

natesm wrote: post #17

Well, I'm switching (I don't have a credit card). What is a good alternative? I know everyone loves USAA, but none of my family has any relation to the military. BoA is "great" because it is everywhere , is there actually anything as wide spread in the (northeast) US?

I switched from BOFA to Schwab about two years ago (after them nickle & diming me for years with spurious fees) and I couldn't be happier. Like Ally, there's no physical bank branches (but they do have physical brokerage locations), you get interest on your checking, and they refund all ATM fees.

They also have an iPhone app that can scan checks, and their integration with their brokerage account/trading is really nice as well.

My favorite part by far is the customer service. They always have very friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable people picking up the phone and I've never had to wait in a phone queue.

I don't think their interest rates are as high as some of the other online banks, so if you run high cash balances rather than high brokerage account values it might not be for you.

Re: Bank of America to charge monthly fee to debit card users

#72

Post by goodweeds »

untog wrote: post #4

I think the thing that really annoys me about these kind of moves is that they're clearly targeting the less fortunate out there. If I want to avoid the $5 that's easy- I'll just switch to my credit card. But people who don't have enough credit to get a credit card now get punished twice. I read a fascinating passage in The Big Short (an excellent book on the financial crisis by Michael Lewis) that told the story of…

If you want to research a foul way of doing business, read up on Chexsystems and the collusion of major banks with national check-cashing firms. 20 years ago a consortium of bankers got together and essentially said, "if we build a credit-report system for bounced checks, we can limit our liabilities from poor people and make them give us 3-5% of their income by blacklisting them from all the nation's banks".

Re: Bank of America to charge monthly fee to debit card users

#73

Post by [deleted] »

untog wrote: post #4

I think the thing that really annoys me about these kind of moves is that they're clearly targeting the less fortunate out there. If I want to avoid the $5 that's easy- I'll just switch to my credit card. But people who don't have enough credit to get a credit card now get punished twice. I read a fascinating passage in The Big Short (an excellent book on the financial crisis by Michael Lewis) that told the story of…

[deleted]

Re: Bank of America to charge monthly fee to debit card users

#74

Post by jerf »

seanalltogether wrote: post #41
patio11 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you know cash has processing fees associated with it, right? Really. They're totally orthogonal to the cost of physically creating paper or metal currency, and they're mostly subsidized by merchants. Cash management is a hard problem. WalMart spends about 3 million every year moving pennies around -- that actual coin type. Every time a salon owner has to spend time driving to the bank or money leaves a cash regist…

I also understand that maintaining roads is not free, however I'm not paying fees to private companies for the privilege of using them because of how important they are to national infrastructure. I should be paying less overall in taxes to maintain these roads then I would be paying a collection of individual for-profit companies to get the same level of service...in theory. Is digital currency still too immature to…

Real costs are probably higher than you expect. Sure, it's so cheap it might as well be free to write a program that debits one number and increases another and run it a few billion times, but reliable financial systems require more than that. Consider what it takes not just to implement a chargeback, but to be able to implement a chargeback, and to be able to stand behind it legally, and to be able to defend against lawsuits, to be able to prove compliance with various regulations, etc etc. Everything looks easy from the outside.

I don't see any compelling reason to think the government would intrinsically do any better, it would just move the costs around and probably incur more of them overall when the full accounting was made, which it never would be, because who can regulate the regulators?

Re: Bank of America to charge monthly fee to debit card users

#75

Post by [deleted] »

pyre wrote: post #45
bilbo0s wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is actually something more fundamentally troubling about this new fee ... it drives Americans to use more credit. It was pointed out to me recently that this tendency towards credit that is really 'built-in' to the rules in our society, would probably end up doing us in one day. Sometimes you don't even think about it. I recall once, shortly after the onset of the financial unpleasantness that began in 2008, I…

One difference between debit and credit is when they do things like authorize payments, but then never actually capture them. When it comes to debit cards, some banks will pull that money out of your account, and not release it until may be 10 days after the authorize expires. On the other hand, these things can happen instantly (or within a day) on a credit card. Some people are rather annoyed when they do something…

[deleted]

Re: Bank of America to charge monthly fee to debit card users

#76

Post by nhangen »

mahyarm wrote: post #60
nhangen wrote: post #24

BankSimple is rejoicing right now. I have a mortgage and 3 separate accounts with BoA, but they still treat me like a 2nd class customer. This could push me over the edge.

It really depends on the branch/employee. I've dealt with idiots, and really great retail bankers at BoA. The stanford mall branch is pretty good in Palo Alto.

I rarely go to the branch offices because it takes an hour to get through the line. Most of my experience is with over the phone help.

Re: Bank of America to charge monthly fee to debit card users

#77

Post by jerf »

untog wrote: post #8
navyrain wrote: post #5

I fail to see why anyone selects a big bank like BofA/WellsFargo/Chase for their personal accounts, when they are known to have a plethora of fees and dubious ethics, and there are almost always better options in regional credit unions. What am I missing?

ATM locations, mostly. Chase has an ATM on every street corner in NYC (OK, an exaggeration, but only just). I know plenty of credit unions refund a certain number of ATM fees, but you can't do thinks like check deposits at them any more.

Check whether your credit union participates in this: http://www.co-opfs.org/public/locators/ATMlocator/index.cfm

You can look for the logo on your ATM card.

I don't guarantee anything but you might be surprised. In fact if you already belong to a credit union you might be very surprised. Check for the logo on your card. I belong to a credit union tied to a university that I've since moved about 2 hours away from, and except for loans (which I do so infrequently I don't mind driving for that, there's a full branch about an hour away) I've got plenty of ATM coverage everywhere I go.

Re: Bank of America to charge monthly fee to debit card users

#78

Post by kalleboo »

seanalltogether wrote: post #14

"The formula sets the cap at 21 cents, plus .05 percent of the transaction amount, plus another penny in certain cases, for fraud-control measures." I understand that running to the government for solutions is rarely a good thing, but in this case, shouldn't "digital currency transactions" be something that the federal government maintains as a free utility to society? Isn't something like this just as important as p…

It can be done. Up until 2005 Denmark's government-regulated debit card network called Dankort was completely free of fees.

Eventually the banks lobbied the government to allow per-transaction fees to be charged for use of the card, but after only a few months of that practice there was so much protest among consumers that the per-transaction fee was converted into a fixed annual fee.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dankort

Re: Bank of America to charge monthly fee to debit card users

#79

Post by smackfu »

navyrain wrote: post #5

I fail to see why anyone selects a big bank like BofA/WellsFargo/Chase for their personal accounts, when they are known to have a plethora of fees and dubious ethics, and there are almost always better options in regional credit unions. What am I missing?

They tend to buy local banks.

Re: Bank of America to charge monthly fee to debit card users

#80

Post by quintinsykes »

blhack wrote: post #54
bilbo0s wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is actually something more fundamentally troubling about this new fee ... it drives Americans to use more credit. It was pointed out to me recently that this tendency towards credit that is really 'built-in' to the rules in our society, would probably end up doing us in one day. Sometimes you don't even think about it. I recall once, shortly after the onset of the financial unpleasantness that began in 2008, I…

>it drives Americans to use more credit. Oh it does not. $5/mo is just a way for BoA to disincentive people from using their debit card. It means more transactions get pushed through VISA network, more fees for visa, and probably a kickback for BoA. My check card can also be processed as credit, and it usually is. This isn't because I'm buying things on credit, it's just that that's how it is being processed. The mon…

The bank likely won't care if you use your card with a PIN ("PIN debit") or with a signature ("Signature debit"), which you refer to as "processed as credit". Either way, they still know it's your debit card that was used even though PIN and Signature debit transactions arrive at the bank through separate networks, so you'll probably get hosed with the fee unless you're in one of their "premium" accounts.

Community banks and credit unions everywhere are licking their chops at the opportunity to siphon off disgruntled customers.

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