Is Bank of America’s $5 Monthly Debit Card Fee Fair?

no. it’s just an extra fee to pay for salaries . . . .

I’ve opened a credit union account and am slowly transitioning my business from BOA. By January 1, that fee won’t apply to me.

Well if they do let me know, I’m counting my pennies as it is, I’ll just go back F/T to the Credit Union, I cannot afford these fees

What about the other side of the Durbin Act? Isn’t this act supposed to save businesses billions of dollars where in return the consumer can enjoy the savings? If this act works the way it should, stores should be offering discounts to buyers with debit cards, since their processing fees will be at least half. In practicallity, those savings should negate the fee. Wouldn’t the person with the 25 debit transactions save 4.75 that month, essentially balancing out the 5 dollar fee? Will that happen? Nope, I doubt stores will lower their prices for it. Actually, I believe convenience stores will now all have a minimum required for any debit/credit transactions, as now they will be charged by Visa or Mastercard 21 cents for even a 2 dollar transaction.

Well Sheila, you sound like a 5th grader. “people don’t want to pay for thier houses” couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, most people don’t want to LOSE their houses but the economy is in the toilet, mortgage payments skyrocketed, and way too many of those people you talk about simply lost their jobs so they don’t have the money to make their mortgage payments. For BofA to institute this fee right now, whether to maintain or increase (more likely) their profits, is unconscionable (look that up).

Is it really that hard to see that “Joe” posted the comment TheMom was talking about?

How is this even an issue? Take any other industry, say food. I went to a restaurant today and they had the nerve to—get this—charge me for my burrito! Get real. People are complaining about 17 cents/day. And like the article says, before the government price fixing, many people were already paying this, just in a different form. I guess it is unfair to the people who only occasionally use their debit card, but the government has made it impossible for banks to fairly do profitable business with these customers. I don’t blame BofA one bit, and I really like their new CEO.

Fair? Well, they can charge what they want to make up for it. Either way, I just pulled my money out of there for other reasons. However, I wouldn’t complain if they charged a per transaction fee to make up for the cost. If someone uses their card once per month and BoA is only losing 20 cents for that transaction, it would be acceptable for them to make up the difference. $5 is unfair, however legal it is. But in the end, you can complain all you want, but words don’t mean anything to banks. Send the message by where you keep your money.

You have to remember that at the enf of the day you decide how you choose to do your banking. I can certainly say that keeping your money at home is not really a good option. How do you pay your bills? what about food? And other resposibilities? You could do prepaid cards, but how much do they charge? and if you do go that route whatif you need to cash a check? you still need to go somewherefor that. How much are you going to pay there? If you loose your card how long will you have to wait to receive another one? Yes its alotof questions, but we forget to ask ourselves. Whatever discision you make think about every aspect of having an account, not just with BOFA but with all banks. What are you getting outof your bank account? The way times are with the economy an all, you need abank that will give u a service for having an account w/ them. If you have FRAUD, or someone steals your identity, need a covenient way to pay bills, need to establish credit for other things to come. People forget about these things. The fact of the matter is, there’s alot of changes occuring in the way banks do business, all banks!

There is a split in financial institutions but is not yet complete. If you want banks to do primary banking (savings, checking, home and personal and local business loans), stick with smaller regional banks and credit unions. The larger banks are transitioning to wealth management companies complete with affiliated brokerage services, hence the need for wealthier depositors and fewer basic checking/savings users. That’s why they charge the little guy fees that they don’t charge the large depositors, to drive them away. They will keep them as depositors as long as they can make money off them but don’t really need them. Eventually you will see the BoA, Citi, Chase and other big banks stop true banking as most people think of it.

Record profits during a nasty recession after our taxpayer money bailed them out. Now they feel they can make up any new fee to extort more after the lawmakers tell them to stop ripping off charge card holders. So, no. Not fair. I can’t believe how many take up for this stuff. Capitalism doesn’t mean extort the country.

Stop crying and realize Obama was voted in fairly in the country and conservatives don’t always get everything their way either. Stop crying Obama needs to make jobs, after your team there claimed prior to Obama the government wasn’t in the business of making jobs. A conservative saying to stop crying right now is a joke. It’s all you do.

Financial and credit card reform never worked out. Banks never blinked a eye. They just passed the cost on down to the consumer.

What I see everyday in new york is a shame, the people are out there protesting, but honestly they have no direction/ leadership, or tactic in tackling the wall street folk. I don’t see a bright future in this country and the reason for it mainly centers around the inability for democrat and republican to come together and agree on one thing. Maybe its time to split the country down the mason dixon and see which side prevails, and for eternity, that side will be the only rulers of the land due to their ability to keep their side of the country moving in the right direction. OH but wait, seeing that grimy politicians are involved they’ll probably manipulate the system in such a way that they seem like they’re winning but in reality they’ve just caused hyper inflation, and everyone in their land is a millionaire. FML!

“Is Bank of America’s plan to charge customers who use their debit card for payments $5 a month next year reasonable…” +++++ I don’t think the fees are fair -they’re used to subsidize investment banking problems- BUT!!!! This is a MISREPRESENTATION of the fee because it doesn’t mention that it does NOT apply to the vast majority of customers who have either direct deposit or a certain minimum deposited. Of course, that means if you don’t get a payroll or pension check and are trying to begin saving to build a life, BofA is chasing you away or charging you while not charging others who may have no savings but simply direct deposit their checks at BofA. In any case, for shame BofA – the customer is doing YOU the favor by letting you hold on to his/her money, not the other way around.

Mick…I would much rather have the customers subsidize investment banking problems than have ALL of us (the taxpayers) subsidize them, now wouldn’t you? Isn’t that much fairer? You don’t like BofA…..but I do. So why should YOU have to subsidize MY bank? Or car manufacturer or unions for that matter. Or Solyndra and other green companies?

That is the way to do it BDUCE. It’s the way the system is supposed to work. If and when BofA gets too expensive (or too “greedy”) for me, I’ll move my money also. As it is right now, the benefits that I get from my home town branch of BofA outweigh the monetary costs and outweigh my aggravation with them. So I’ll hang with them for a bit longer. But what you are doing is exactly what needs to be done

Pushing us back to a cash economy might not bee such a bad thing. Maybe then, people will recognize that they can’t “have it all and have it now”. And, of course, there will always be the electronic economy because the economy has become global. We could not get back to a pure cash economy. That the banks can go to the govt to get money at super low rates IS a double-edged sword. The banks don’t have to pay high interest rates in the savings accounts (bad for me), but on the other hand, lending rates are also at an historical low for mortgages, cars, and even some credit cards. The ATM fees are not that well hidden….mine have been listed on my account agreement with BofA from the beginning…and it’s not at all in the “small print”. And, yes, the stores are charged a fee…and all was well with that….until DICK durban decided to play “middle-class hero” and limit how much the banks could charge the stores. And that boneheaded move was the genesis of this whole uproar over BofA deciding to charge the customers the $5.00 fee to make up for losses from the stores. It gained nothing for the consumers at all…..the stores pay a lower fee, but has anyone seen the stores lowering their prices in reaction to that? Nope. But where is the liberal outrage over that? Now the evil stores are daring to make a profit! Can you imagine??? How DARE they? So we consumers don’t realize any gain from DICK durban’s addendum bill, and we DO get hit with this new fee from the bank…..It’s just the kind of things that happen when the inmates take over the asylum.

so you want to charge me to use my own money.. Screw that i’ll be pulling my money and sadly all banks will suffer because i won’t use banks anymore.. My local party store can get my % of money from cashing it there.
This will also help the post office as they will be getting more people using snail mail inplace of accounts.
BOA if you continue to move forward with this you will be asking the government for more money again.. If you do anything remove the matching rolling change crap.

The debit card fee is much more fair than the egregious interest rates being charged on credit cards. I thought Dodd-Franke was supposed to protect us from this. I can only imagine what low wage consumers who can ill-afford all of the expense are paying on their credit cards. This debit card fee pales by comparison.

Why do people keep banking with BofA? I hope they go down and go down hard. What a terrible bank!!!! They don’t treat their employees or customers well at all. Horrible service to boot!! Sooooo many FEE$$$$$$. They were happy to take the bailout $ and give the corp big wigs nice bonuses.Bye Bye BOA………

you are right, “bofa stinks”…the banks should never have taken the bailout money. But more importantly, they never should have been offered the bail out money. Who’s the bigger sinner in this case? Who’s the bigger sinner? The drug addict (the banks) or the drug pusher (obama)?

I am leaving BofA after being a customer since 1985. It is clear that the bank is trying to shed unprofitable customers and cater to people with automatic deposits, the upper classes and corporations. The bankers won’t say this to the media, but they know that raising fees will only piss off the customers the bank is glad to be rid of. When all the news blows over they will go back to reaping in billions from less bothersome and more profitable customers, as we peons shift are meager sheckles to another local bank. Just as planned.

I just opened an account with Ally bank…screw B of A and their greedy fees…bye bye B of A…

credit union ……… Im going to close my account and change my deposits to a credit union …Im tire of the fees from bank of america

Bank of America, has being in trouble time and time again. Their CEO’s are overpaid, and they made some terrible decisions for Bank of America. These guys, are the problem, greed won’t pay, either customers will go back to writing checks to avoid this ridiculous ATM fee, or they will simply walk away from Bank of America. Bank of America troubles are due to their bad loans they made, they simply ignored the red flags when making these loans, and now they want to recover some of their losses through their customers, and it won’t work.

Charging a fee for debit card use is completely absurd esp when the CEO is getting million dollar bonuses. I dont ever recall hearing the CEO offering to take a pay cut or turn down their bonus in an effort to save their company any money or to save their employees from being laid off. I dont see the CEO or president offering to help the families of their laid off workers through these hard economic times and I suspect I never will. This country for all of its greatness needs to stop and take a look at how we are treating our people. How can we march into other countries and tell them how to live and “protect their human rights” if we are not even taking care of the people here. We dont really care about our human rights, if we did we would not be in the situation we are in now. Take more from the poor when they do not have anything as it is. For a big bank like BofA or any of the big banks to charge a fee for this use is nothing but pure GREED. Have we not learned what the consequences of greed are yet? Have we all been asleep for the last 3 years (really a lot longer than that). People wake, take action, change banks. When there is a run on the bank and they see money is flowing out, they will come around or they will fail. Maybe its time for them to fail. BofA was the biggest lender of sub prime mortgages, they received quite a large bail out from YOUR money, do they REALLY need more? If you cannot afford it, you dont need it. Live with in your means.

Define fair? Typically if a business makes their price and fees well known it is fair. The consumer can decide if it is worthwhile to make the purchase or give this company their business. With so many banks out there it may be a matter of deciding whether the convenient location of your BOA makes it worthwhile to accept the $5 fee. –

In this article numbers are tossed are around without explanation. Is it a 21 cent fee or a 24 cent fee? It is stated that the average cost to the bank is 17 cents (not including the cost of fraud) and 24 cents will be charged which will net 7 cents to the bank. No explanation is give on how the fee went 21 to 24 cents (the banks may also charge an average of 3 cents for fraud protection). If you assume that 3 cents is a banks per transaction fraud cost then their cost per transaction is 20 cents and they will net an average of 4 cents. If BOA has high processing cost perhaps they are losing money on each transaction?

Think BIG not small. $5 multiply by the number of BOA’s customers who get this fee = $$$$$$$$$. Let see if we plot in a number of customers who get this fee: $5 X 100,000 (this # can be bigger) BOA’s customers = $500,000 per month. 12 months in a year X $500,000 = $6,000,000 per year. Now is that a small amount of money. It’s just another way for Bank of America to paid their way through their own corrupted business practices using YOUR MONEY.