Bank of America reduces overdraft fees: Opting out is now an option!
Jennifer McClelland | RSS | 1 Comment
It is a huge deal when banks charge everyone and their mother huge overdraft fees. Bank of America was one of the worst. The bank would hold your deposits or allow small transactions to go through prior to the larger deposit being made. Of course, this led to many overdraft fees being incurred by the customer. For every transaction that the customer made, they were tinged $35.
Bank of America just announced though that on October 19th, it will begin laying off the serious overdraft fees and only begin tinging the account once it reaches a $10 overdraft in one day. This means accumulated and not that you can continue to overdraft as long as it doesn’t go above $10 (at least this is the way I understood it). The account holder also has to have the account back in the black in five days time.
That’s not the most exciting news regarding the overdraft fees in my opinion, though. I like the fact that customers will soon be able to opt out of the program just by visiting a Bank of America branch or calling a yet to be determined phone number. Of course, the program I’m referring to is the one that starts the overdraft problem in the first place. I would much rather be declined at the grocery store than begin incurring overdraft fees at the bank. My embarrassment is less than the $35 that the bank would charge me for the “overdraft protection”.
Bank of America will also be limiting the number of overdraft fees that can be incurred in a day to four. This is down from 10. The rule that it could charge 10 overdraft fees in one single day was put into place earlier this year. It is nice to see that rule gone and a new, better one in its place.
I don’t know if this will position BofA in a more positive light, but anything helps when it comes to the business practices this company has been doing. I know I talk a lot about the company, but I also hold a credit card from them and have yet to see my interest rates spike or my credit limit reduced. I haven’t had one bad experience with the company (knock on wood, right?).
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Tags: grocery store, interest rates, fees
Frank Fitton | Fri, Sep 25 2009
The legislation is coming, so basically the banks are seeing their cash cow about to be taken away so they’ve decided they might as well get some good PR out of the deal and announce that they are doing it themselves. They want to make it sound like their doing it out of some altruistic desire to help their customers, but as anyone who has dealt with the banks knows, that is never going to be the case. A quote from Wall Street comes to mind, as Gordon Gecko said “Greed is good”.
The getting rid of fees for small overdrafts is certainly a good thing, just don’t fall for the banks PR spin that its out of a desire to help out people who are struggling. Go sell crazy someplace else, we’re all stocked up here.
Check out my blog on the easing of overdraft “policies” at…. http://www.thedebtgazette.com/2009/09/banks-respond-to-criticism-by-easing-overdraft-fees/