We are having a tough time keeping up with the nonsense at BofA. Adding to their recent problems, they have now announced that they are going to start charging their own customers $5.00 a month if they want to use their debit cards. Yup, BofA is going to charge it's own customers $60 a year to access their own money.
I don't know much about banking. My issues with BofA are on the brokerage side, which I do know something about. But this new fee demonstrates some of the problems on the brokerage side for BofA - they simply do not have a clue.
Smaller banks are jumping for joy at BofA's latest move; others are as well. The Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) claims that the bank earns a profit of 1100 percent every time a debit card is swiped, and have cost merchants over 20 billion dollars last year. “Crying poverty and adding fees, all while collecting a 600 percent profit on every transaction is one heck of a public relations strategy,” according to Katherine Lugar, the RILA's executive vice president for public affairs. “Bank of America's new fee is great news for every other bank in America. If Bank of America wants to charge account holders to access their own money, every other bank, particularly credit unions and community banks will welcome the flood of customers in search of a new bank,” added Lugar.
Senator Richard Durbin, architect of debit card interchange fee reform, bashed the proposed monthly fee. "Bank of America is trying to find new ways to pad their profits by sticking it to its customers," he said in a statement. It's overt, unfair, and I hope their customers have the final say."
