Banks and their fees

[CaptainJaneway]

http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-bud...pphu-container

I really hate bank of america right now. I seriously need to move my accounts somewhere else.

Other banks are testing out these fees in various markets to see how it goes over with their customers.

They have some nerve to charge me to use my own money? Really and to avoid these fees you have to have at least 15k to 20k in an account with these banks. Who has this kind of money in this economy? Some people are just lucky to have 5.00 in their accounts.

I am going to have to find a credit union or move everything to ing direct.

[bara]

Yeah.. when Chase took over Bank One they started charging a bunch of crazy fees. Im at a local bank called Mechanics now and they are awesome. Free checking and the few charges they do have make sense.. like minimum account balance (30 bucks). And thats monthly.. so as long as you have 30 at the end of the month is not problem.

[Greenday]

I have Wells Fargo. Gotta say, I have no complaints with them other than their hours. But even then, their services has been pretty good as far as I've used them.

[AdminAssistant]

The hours are a main reason why I won't switch to the local credit union. Sorry, but you should maybe considering opening before 10 am. Or maybe offer student checking accounts to *all* students instead of those under 25. *grumble*

I'll probably stick with BofA until we decide where we're moving to next year. The customer service at the local branch is excellent and their location is fairly convenient...although it's really frustrating that they only have one location here.

[Talon]

I switched to ING direct this summer. True to their commercials, they haven't charged me one sweet penny for their service. They even keep a running counter of how much interest you've saved with them.

The only downside is at least here in Toronto's east-end, their ABM's aren't as common as the other 5 banks. I've so far kept my old account with a few dollars for emergencies, but not for regular transactions anymore.

[Rageaholic]

The government bailed these assholes out and yet they still find ways to screw over the public? Fuck these banks. BofA isn't getting a penny from me (good thing I'm with Chase).

[tabbyblack13]

I am not very happy with Wells right now. They sold my student loan to Xerox and it really put a kink in the convince factor for repayment. It's not a major inconvenience so I won't leave them, yet.

I have an account with a Credit Union to keep my emergency money separate from my spending money. I am even getting a better return on my savings at the Credit Union then Wells. So if there is something that pisses me off with the bank I will leave and take everything to the Credit Union.

[LexiaFira]

It seems that ever since Bank Of America BoA has announced that they are failing/flailing they have added all these fees in an attempt to save themselves with disregard to their customers.
As Rage said though I did not know the government bailed them out.

Having seen the commercial about the whole accept the fee or don't get your money? I forget the details i just recall the whole line at the atm and the guy getting irate about it.
And i recall when BoA was Nation's Bank of Texas or some such....and even then I disliked it greatly when they were taken over.

[Andara Bledin]

I have Wells Fargo. Gotta say, I have no complaints with them other than their hours. But even then, their services has been pretty good as far as I've used them.

They tried to screw me over with my paycheck deposits and did the same with my brother. They've been fined heavily twice for precisely the reason I bailed on them. BofA has been fined for the same thing as far as I can figure.

The reason they're doing this (and I expect pretty much every bank is going to follow suit for the same reason) is that the government is limiting how much they can charge people for accepting debit cards.

Oh, and while BofA is charging $5 for having a debit card, CitiBank is introducing a checking account fee.

It makes me wonder when a person posts a link, then makes a comment that indicates that they either didn't read it or didn't understand it. BofA is not "charging you to use your money." They're charging a fee to use a debit card. CitiBank, on the other hand...

To be honest, every single major bank in existence sucks balls. Whether you get hit with the suck is mostly dependent upon which branch you happen to operate out of and whether the manager there is an ass. I've been screwed by Wells Fargo, as has my brother. My mother and aunt were screwed by BofA. My boss got shit from Washington Mutual. She also got the runaround from City National, which is weird because the company uses them and has had lovely service. It's all a crap shoot, really. Plus, it depends on how you operate. Those who take better care with their finances aren't going to feel the suck as much as those who kite checks or similar.
^-.-^

[blas87]

I have Bank Mutual. Not many days go by where I don't consider taking it all to RCU (and getting a $50 bonus for setting up an account), but I hear bad things about credit union banks.

Bank Mutual has the nerve to charge me for using my debit card "too much". Not that I overdraft. Nope. Only ONCE have I ever written a check that bounced. I never have a zero or negative balance. But, because I use my debit card for everything, BAM, every month, $2-$5 they take right out. "Card Activity Charges". Around Christmas, when I'm shopping like nuts, it's more than that, so I've started buying people's gifts at all the same stores to avoid many different transactions. I don't feel safe with cash and don't like to have much on me. Debit cards were MADE to be used, and used in much frequency.

RCU has unlimited debit use, but limited check writing, or vice versa. And you know, I'd be ok with that, if I had known Bank Mutual was going to charge me just for having a debit card.

[mikoyan29]

Apparently the reason they are charging this is because they have to change how they process checks now. They used to be able to process them in any particular order. Now, I think they have to process deposits before they process withdrawls. Also, I think they have to process withdrawls in the order the receive them and not highest to lowest (the big withdrawl clears but there isn't enough to cover a bunch of little withdrawls...Instead of getting hit with one overdraft...you get hit with a bunch).

But of course the Limbaugh crowd is blaming the government for daring to regulate banks. I mean the nerve.....

[Gravekeeper]

I have one monthly service fee for a couple of my extra account features. It is like...$7 I think. And that's the only fee my bank charges....

My bank is in Canuckistan though.

[Andara Bledin]

My bank account is free because I have direct deposit. And now, because they can't charge as much for businesses to accept debit cards, they're going to lose a lot of money, so they're going to pass that on to the rest of us in other ways, which in the case of BofA, is a $5 debit card fee.

Meh. Color me not particularly upset.

Seriously, if you want to find someone to be pissed at, be pissed at the Federal Reserve which is responsible for the banks scrambling to find ways to replace revenue they'll be losing from the new limits on what merchants pay to accept debit cards. It used to be they collected an average of 44 cents per transaction, and that's now limited to only 24 cents per transaction. That's barely more than half. If the cap had been less severe, the banks wouldn't have felt the need to cover the resulting losses in revenue so strongly.

Article at PostStar.com that explains why some banks are adding charges, others are reducing services, and some are looking to gain customers. I suspect a lot who aren't adding fees now will either find themselves in trouble in the future or buckle and add the fees they chose not to add now.

^-.-^

[tropicsgoddess]

I'm not happy about the fees Bank of America is charging. Five dollars a month to use my debit card with MY money in it?!!! That's fucking ridiculous and then to top it, they want to charge me $12 a month if I don't have at least $250/week direct deposited into my account!

[Panacea]

It seems that ever since Bank Of America BoA has announced that they are failing/flailing they have added all these fees in an attempt to save themselves with disregard to their customers.
As Rage said though I did not know the government bailed them out.

Having seen the commercial about the whole accept the fee or don't get your money? I forget the details i just recall the whole line at the atm and the guy getting irate about it.
And i recall when BoA was Nation's Bank of Texas or some such....and even then I disliked it greatly when they were taken over.

I despise BOA. When they were still Nation's Bank, they bought out my local bank. Around that time, I left my first corrections job and needed to roll my pension into an IRA, so I went to my local branch. The investments manager (a new lady I didn't know) steered me into a HORRIBLE set of mutual funds. I lost 2/3rds of my money before I pulled out. She made a fat commission.

She also convinced me to consolidate a small loan and my credit cards onto a single credit card with a lower interest rate. Sounded like a good idea to me, so I agreed. Bear in mind, I'd never missed a payment on any of these accounts.

A month later the bank calls me to tell me I'm no longer a good credit risk, and I have to repay the card AT ONCE, and they are canceling the card.

At the same time this happened, my husband and I were separating. I'd just spent several thousand dollars fixing his financial problems and getting him set up with a new place in order to cut the cord. I didn't have it.

It started me on a downward spiral of debt that took me 10 YEARS to pay off.

A couple of years later, the difficulties in paying this debt had gotten so bad, I went to a credit counseling agency for help. They negotiated a smaller payment, and I paid faithfully on it . . . until one day the bank started returning my checks (I had a couple of years left to pay on this). I called and called to find out why, and got bounced to no less than 13 offices from coast to coast.

No one could tell me: where my account was, who was in charge of it, how much I owed, why the checks were being returned, what I could do to pay off the account (by this time I was in California working a new job and had money again). Finally, I gave up.

Fast forward several years. I start getting harassed by a collections agency that is taking INTEREST onto the debt! In California, they are allowed to do this. What was a few hundred dollars had ballooned to nearly a grand. They were threatening to take me to court . . . and at first they couldn't even tell me who the original creditor was (Nation's Bank, now BOA). I talked to a lawyer who told me fighting it would cost me more than it was worth, and I'd be best off paying it, which I did. Bastards.

On top of all that, BOA put me on Checkserv (has another name now I think), and I couldn't open a checking account anywhere for 7 years. Washington Mutual was nice to me and let me have one after 3. Still, for three years I had to use a credit union savings account and pay all my bills by direct bank withdrawals or by money order. It was a royal pain.

I will NEVER EVER do business with them for ANYTHING.

Right now my money is in a Credit Union. They charge me $2/month to service my account: which includes free unlimited checking, debit card, and online banking. I don't mind paying that fee; it is reasonable and it was upfront.

What I did mind was Chase adding on $10/month "service fee" simply because my balance dropped too low. There is nothing about my account that makes it any more expensive to manage than when I have lots of money in it. It's a fee for poor people, basically. So I just closed that account. They don't have a branch in my area anyway (they bought out my WaMu account, which I kept when I left California because their customer service was so good).