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Who is leaving BoA?

mandown

Poopdeck Repost
Jun 1, 2004
20,130
7,679
Transylvania 90210
Yup. Give them an inch and they will take a mile. I don't use them, but my impression is that BoA is to banking what AT&T is to wireless.
 

CrabJoe StretchPants

Reincarnated Crab Walking Head Spinning Bruce Dick
Nov 30, 2003
14,163
2,484
Groton, MA
I'm thinking I might bail upon learning this. The bank I have my mortgage through is a much better, small-town private bank.......I'll likely just have a checking/savings account with them. Not that $5/month is a huge deal, but it's more the principal I suppose.
 

dante

Unabomber
Feb 13, 2004
8,807
9
looking for classic NE singletrack
I'm waiting to see what the actual fine print says. After the whole "OMFG banks are going to charge for checking accounts" eruption last year, it turns out that 70+% of banking customers are able to avoid all of the bank fees altogether (ie, checking account fees, minimum balance fees, etc). Just saw this:

BofA said its customers could avoid the new debit card fees much the way they can avoid maintenance fees on checking accounts. They would need to have, for instance, a BofA mortgage or a combined $20,000 in all their accounts at the bank and at Merrill Lynch & Co., its Wall Street investment unit.
So basically if you have a mortgage with them, your exempt. If you have your IRA with them, you're exempt. I'm guessing that just like the checking account fees, it's primarily going to fall on the poorer Americans (including college students) who don't have IRAs, mortgages, etc. For example, with WF I'm able to avoid all fees just by having an auto-transfer every month from checking into savings. I can immediately transfer it back (or set up a monthly transfer the day after), but it's little things like that that enable the banks to avoid charging their best customers (who would probably walk at the idea of paying $60/year just to use a debit card).
 

stevew

resident influencer
Sep 21, 2001
40,494
9,524
white people...spend 1k-6k on a bike......but 5 bucks a month is a deal breaker.
 

lovebunny

can i lick your balls?
Dec 14, 2003
7,310
209
San Diego, California, United States
the problem i had with bofa is i would sometimes have money missing. like up to 200 dollars one time. i dont know what happened, i complained and they couldnt figure it out either. i also have a friend who had a similar thing happen to him except he only lost 70 bucks. needless to say im very please with chase
 

Sandwich

Pig my fish!
Staff member
May 23, 2002
21,031
5,921
borcester rhymes
uh, I guess I'm the only person, huh.

I have BofA, and I've liked them because online account management is awesome and relatively easy. Their ATMs are almost as plentiful as DuDo out here, and they have so many branches that I can generally find one that's open on the weekends or in the evenings, which for 99% of working people, is nice to have.

The fees have never previously bothered me. You have to be either stupid or negligent to run into them, and you can generally get out of them if you are momentarily stupid. I've never had a balance big enough to collect much in the way of interest (yay cars, diamond rings, bikes, and a new house), so the 0.000001% APY is not a big deal to me, as access to my money was more important to me.

I say WAS because this new fee is simply too much. Already you are at risk of so many different fees, and if you do the math, it's $60/year to use your debit card, and that is significantly more than any yield that the bank gives you. I wonder if they're doing this to chase out the riff raff, as that $5/mo for all their customers is going to turn into so much revenue that it will likely easily eclipse the loss that they're seeing because our government has prevented us from getting ****ed as much.

I'll probably try and find some local FCU, as we're buying a house and I shouldn't need an ATM within 20 ft of me at all times now. I think there's a DCU near us and something else.
 

HAB

Chelsea from Seattle
Apr 28, 2007
11,580
2,005
Seattle
I have an account with them only because they have a partnership with an Australian bank so I could use ATMs for free while I was over there. That was nice but everything else about them blows. I've been meaning to close the account, thanks for the reminder.
 

J-Dubs

Monkey
Jul 10, 2006
700
1
Salem, MA
the problem i had with bofa is i would sometimes have money missing. like up to 200 dollars one time. i dont know what happened, i complained and they couldnt figure it out either. i also have a friend who had a similar thing happen to him except he only lost 70 bucks. needless to say im very please with chase
That happened to me a number of years ago as well. $100- Then they tried to charge me for an overdraft, which I fought and won, but my $100- was gone. I was pretty broke at the time and so I went back to the bank I had as a kid. Been very happy there ever since.
 

lovebunny

can i lick your balls?
Dec 14, 2003
7,310
209
San Diego, California, United States
That happened to me a number of years ago as well. $100- Then they tried to charge me for an overdraft, which I fought and won, but my $100- was gone. I was pretty broke at the time and so I went back to the bank I had as a kid. Been very happy there ever since.
thats EXACTLY what i did haha. i was only working a 12 dollar an hour job at the time. i couldnt afford to lose 200 dollars. i had wamu as a kid so i went back to chase. i love chase. they rock. when i get back to the states im gonna join a credit union i think
 

woodsguy

gets infinity MPG
Mar 18, 2007
1,083
1
Sutton, MA
Who uses debit cards any more when there are credit cards giving 5% back? And to go with that who uses cash anymore with credit cards giving 5% back? We put everything on our cards and get back over a thousand a year (we pay them off each month with no fees).
 
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sanjuro

Tube Smuggler
Sep 13, 2004
17,373
0
SF
I'd like to move, but BoA is down the street from my apartment and all over Norcal. I'd rack up 5 ATM charges a month if I found a no-fee bank.
 

Sandwich

Pig my fish!
Staff member
May 23, 2002
21,031
5,921
borcester rhymes
I agree, but the wife and I use a joint account, and our finances are not ironed out to the point that we can put it all on a card then pay it off. Debit makes tracking easier.
 

SuspectDevice

Turbo Monkey
Aug 23, 2002
4,157
359
Roanoke, VA
Who uses debit cards any more when there are credit cards giving 5% back?
People who aren't rich enough to qualify for a credit card? A huge part of the US population has no credit or bad credit or even bank accounts(so we can't be liend by governments). We have to start with "secured" cards which require money down. Lots of money, like $250 or $500. That is half a months pay for an average full-time adjunct communitycollege teacher ferchrissakes!

I pretty much have to use BOFA merchant services- way cheaper than the other options and next day deposits, free keyed in entry on my phone and a one-time $15 charge for the hardware I need to swipe cards on the road. Of course they can do this because they bought the previous largest processor, but hey that's "capitalism". All merchant serviceproviders are evil. Might as well use the quickest one.
As to banks,
It's rough that everyone who works at my local BOFA branches puts up with my idiocy and paranoia, but they don't have the flexibility to waive my overdraft fees as often as I would like(!), credit my deposits fast enough and generally muss up the standard rules of banking to help out my small business. They also admit that there would be nothing I could do if the corporate offices decide to close their local branches... Bofa doesn't refund my ATM fees nationwide like my local Co-Operatives do nor do they offer no fee 2% checking accounts, write loans for local co-operative businesses with non-profit agencies as co-signers or get actively involved in local business networking and resource sharing.

Keeping what little money I have local is important, when the same people I buy food, beer, gas, pants from use the same local bank, we keep our lending institutions healthy and secure that benefits all of us. Out here in Western MA we are lucky that we have about 5 robust local banks and a few smaller local banks to chose from. They truly are partners in our local communities.
The only thing that a good local bank can't do for you is offer nationwide cash deposits at ATM's. That sucks if you are on the road selling t shirts, but I always think of that stuff as expense money..
 

dante

Unabomber
Feb 13, 2004
8,807
9
looking for classic NE singletrack
white people...spend 1k-6k on a bike......but 5 bucks a month is a deal breaker.
Some of us white people can afford (justify?) spending $1,000+ on a bike *because*we don't spend $5/month on things like frivolous banking fees (or Netflix, or cable, or...).

Besides, why spend $60/year if you don't have to? There are plenty of smaller banks and credit unions that don't charge you a fee to use your debit card.
 

KavuRider

Turbo Monkey
Jan 30, 2006
2,565
4
CT
Some of us white people can afford (justify?) spending $1,000+ on a bike *because*we don't spend $5/month on things like frivolous banking fees (or Netflix, or cable, or...).

Besides, why spend $60/year if you don't have to? There are plenty of smaller banks and credit unions that don't charge you a fee to use your debit card.

Exactly...

I went through this with WF recently. They are doing something similar, but being a lot more quiet about it. I told them I'd take my money elsewhere, they changed my account to a "free checking account" (for now). Been a customer for 15 years...

Anyways, this kind of stuff is just going to make me start carrying cash again.
 

Ciaran

Fear my banana
Apr 5, 2004
9,839
15
So Cal
white people...spend 1k-6k on a bike......but 5 bucks a month is a deal breaker.
Absolutely! EVERY penny counts. And I would rather not give my money away no matter how small the amount. If 5 bucks is no big deal to you then send it to me. But my hard earned cash is important to me, every freaking cent.

And I am not white.
 

dante

Unabomber
Feb 13, 2004
8,807
9
looking for classic NE singletrack
You missed the "like" in the quoted comment.

Trust me, companies LOVE people like you who say "oh, what's another $5 here, or $10 there, I don't want to complain/change anything/stop buying something/etc because then people will think I'm cheap." Even after the whole Netflix debacle, they were only down ~4% in subscribers. True, it's a vast slowdown over what they were projecting, and calls into question their entire growth potential, but from the standpoint of customers getting annoyed enough to change, it was a very, very small number.
 

Ciaran

Fear my banana
Apr 5, 2004
9,839
15
So Cal
All this time and you still know nothing about me. I would save it and buy some really good weed!

sh1tty weed indeed... :disgust1: