Bloomberg posted the details as to which accounts will be hit with the new $5.00 fee for using debit cards.
Would it surprise you to know that the Top 1% with accounts linked to Merrill Lynch will not get hit? Nope – nor the “try it” college student accounts.
Those who have the least, who cannot keep minimum balances and don’t have brokerage accounts, and who, presumably, are too stupid or beaten down to change – THOSE are the customers who will pay this fee.Why? Because BOA (the BOA constrictor type snake comes to mind) can no longer charge retailers 44 cents every time you use your debit card. That elimination of ‘swipe fees’, by the way, was a major help to struggling retailers.
Don’t mess with the BOA constrictor – they will only tighten around the struggling poor and working class and what is left of the middle class.
I am moving the convenience account I kept at BOA in addition to my far less expensive Metropolitan Credit Union account.
How about you??
This exemplifies the predatory behavior that has ALWAYS characterized BofA. This is why they should have been prosecuted for their role in destroying the home equity assets of millions of Americans.
My family uses Eastern Bank (they acquired Wainwright Bank earlier this year), and we will NEVER go back to BofA or its brethren.
What I don’t understand is how they keep attracting customers.
I think they buy banks that have customers. That’s how I almost wound up with them. When I heard they were going to buy US Trust, I went to a credit union.
It’s also how they get so many mortgage ‘customers.’ They buy up the mortgages. Apparently, sometimes they think they’ve bought a mortgage when they haven’t – or when there is no mortgage to buy. Doesn’t stop them from trying to foreclose. They also seem to have trouble complying with that law that protects members of the military from foreclosure. Of course, that law’s only been on the books since the Civil War…
They’re just too big to fail care.
I closed my account when UST ceased to be.
But I also don’t think this will be something isolated to Bank of America, but expect that other banks will adopt similar pricing for their debit cards.
A provision in last year’s financial reform bill capped the fees that banks can charge a merchant in a debit card transaction. The fees thereby lost by the banks are big, and it should come as no surprise that they look to replace the revenue stream. For similar reasons, I would not expect “free checking” to last all that much longer either, and I would expect most other banks to follow suit.
The end of the fees– which were gouging merchants, we were informed by the provision’s sponsor. What a victory for Main Street! Doubtless you have already noticed the benefits of the price decrease passed on to consumers.
No? Me neither. Result? Debit cards are a service that (still) costs money. I guess it is a positive thing that the cost is more transparent to the consumer than it was. Consumers are thus given incentive to use credit cards rather than debit cards. Windfall to Wal-Mart and Target, oops I mean Main Street. Thanks, Sen. Durbin!
Generally speaking, an example of why I am generally skeptical of this sort of government regulation.
When debit cards were rolled out, it was all about paperless-green-modern. I was never crazy about a faux Visa linked to my checking, especially for on-line transactions, but I did use it in stores where writing a check was a hassle for those in line behind me.
Now, I will write checks again.
My understanding was that banks wanted debit cards to get away from paper processing – just like I now get tiny photos of my cancelled checks rather than the checks back. The debit was supposed to save money by eliminating that function.
Adam Smith would have approved: he was a big supporter of regulation to enable the most free and open markets possible.
If the regulation is at fault for the debit fee then why aren’t all the banks enacting a $5 fee? It always surprises me how easily people gobble up whatever some big business’ PR department claims is the truth.
over the course of the next year or so.
I don’t shop at Walmart.
I don’t eat at McDonald’s.
All for pretty much the same reason — a scorched-Earth set of money-making strategies whose logical long-term outcome will be the elimination of a middle-class that can afford any options beyond the barely sufficient ones represented by these companies.