In May some financial institutions started to impose monthly fees for using debit cards. The monthly charge ranged from three to six dollars depending on your bank. Customers were only charged for purchases made with the card. They could still use the ATM without being charged. Banks started to charge these fees in accordance to new federal rules that were not profitable for the banks. Some people were unaware of these changes that were taking place with their account. Mark Watson, communication major and a former employee of a financial institution was aware of these unfair charges.
SunTrust, Wells Fargo, Regions Bank, and Bank of America are some of the banks that were imposing monthly charges. Wells Fargo tested out the new charge in a few states. As a Bank of America customer I was outraged to learn of this new charge to my account. I was considering leaving Bank of America and depositing my money into my credit union or moving to a bank free of fees.
Banks received a lot of backlash from their customers about these monthly charges. Recently SunTrust, Wells Fargo, and Regions bank abandoned the monthly debit usage fee. Mark believed that more customers will leave their bank and move to credit unions. Currently credit unions do not charge monthly fees. Bank of America stood alone when they said that they will not get rid of their five dollar monthly charge. Mark also believed that banks decided to stop charging the customer’s monthly fees because of a high volume of customer complaints. As of yesterday 10/31/2011, Bank of America dropped their monthly debit card usage fee. I guess they were tired of getting irate calls and complaints from their customers.
Hear what Mark has to say about these monthly charges:
Actually, my knowledge on the whole 'debit card charge' situation was limited to what people were saying around Facebook and Twitter. I knew that my bank, Capital One, was not engaging in such charges so I was not worried much about it. But this post was a great source of information on what happened and what is happening regarding our banks and debit cards. It's awesome how you had the opportunity to interview someone who has actually worked at a Federal Credit Union, very relevant. It's a relief knowing that people who have actually worked in that field feel the same way about these charges as we do. Very solid post and the interview sound clips were very clear too. Great job! Thanks!
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