Nov 22, 2011
Bank Fee Whack-a-Mole: Some Charges Get Axed, but Others Are Coming
By Martha C. White
The dust has barely settled over the debit card fee-flap but there’s more news from the big banks regarding fees. The good news is that it’s not all bad this time — both Bank of America and Chase have abandoned fees that were under consideration or in the testing phase. Meanwhile, though, banks are quietly calculating which other ones can take their place. Get ready for fee whack-a-mole. Aside from abandoning its test of a $3 debit fee, Chase also deep-sixed two monthly maintenance fees it rolled out several months ago in a couple of markets.
“The test accounts included a $10 monthly fee in Oklahoma that couldn’t be waived and a $15 account in Atlanta that was waivable with $1,500 in checking or a combined $5,000 in deposit and investment accounts,” Chase spokesman Thomas Kelly said via email.
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Good news, right? Not so fast. The New York Times reports that several large banks are charging fees on everything from replacing a stolen debit card ($5 at Bank of America) to making a deposit via mobile phone (50 cents at U.S. Bank) to having cash wired into an account ($15 at TD Bank starting next month).
These new fees tend to share a couple of characteristics that make them a little less annoying than the widely derided debit fees or high monthly maintenance fees that draw so much ire among bank customers. First, some of these fees — like the U.S. Bank mobile-deposit fee — are fairly small. The Times also points out that many big banks have inched up their monthly maintenance fees by a few bucks or so recently.
Some of these new fees target conveniences or penalties like overdrawing your account or losing your debit card. Such fees are less likely to rile a broad base of consumers because their impact is hard to quantify. For example, if the amount your bank charges you to use an out-of-network ATM goes up by a dollar, you can’t easily anticipate how much that’s going to cost you after a year.
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Full story: http://moneyland.time.com/2011/11/22/get-ready-for-bank-fee-whack-a-mole/?iid=pf-main-lede
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