Bank Fees: May I Have Another Please?

I came home from work today, and decided to stroll on over to the mailbox to see if there was anything good in there. To my disappointment, which occurs on a daily basis, week after week, there was no million dollar check from a mysterious benefactor that would dramatically change my hum drum existence. What I got instead was an envelope from my banking institution (which shall stay nameless) that said I had important changes to my checking account. For one brief moment, a world of delightful possibilities entered my head as to what these changes might be: a 100% match on all deposits; unlimited checking overdrafts with no fees; a lifetime supply of free checks with cute little puppy dogs, gumdrops and rainbows; access to accounts of other bank customers to “borrow” funds with no expectation of repayment. But alas, my hopes were dashed as I opened the letter and saw no mention of my dream benefits, and instead saw the dreaded words “new monthly service fee”.

I then had a startling epiphany (and definitely won’t be much of an epiphany to anyone else) that I have never received a notice of change to my credit card, banking, savings, investment, ect. account that was of a positive nature. What the heck is a service fee anyway? What does it cost for them to keep my account information in the database? Is there a workforce of IT guys who hand input every transaction I, and every other customer, make and we are paying their salaries. I understand they have to pay other employees, but I am sure my money that they chose to loan out at exorbitant rates more than covers the paychecks for the tellers. They already have so many other ridiculous fees that just a couple of them on my account per year far outweigh the paltry interest they pay on my savings account. Prior to this notice, my account had been a gratis checking account with no monthly service fee, however the bank’s Income Inventor, Fee Finagler, Bolsterer of the Bottom Line, or whatever his title was, had come up with yet another way to separate me from my already meager financial resources. The letter however did mention a number of ways to prevent the service fee and help me attain financial salvation. One was to maintain a daily balance of $1,500 or more in my checking account. How about nope. I have actual bills to pay out of my checking account so it usually does not have that much, especially on an average daily basis, however if they mean by average daily basis once every two weeks on payday then I am set. The next option was to keep $5,000 on average in all your accounts total. This one still doesn’t help me, however if I was a little more frugal maybe I would attain this, but heck, who wants to do that? Don’t we all live up to our means, spending every possible penny and not saving anything? At this point in the letter I was becoming quite anxiety-ridden because I could see I had only one more criteria I could meet to avoid this outlandish fee, and I full well knew that they save the most ludicrous criteria for last. This letter did not disappoint in that respect. The last “criteria” you could meet to avoid the $10 fee was to pay $25 in qualifying account fees (e.g. overdraft fees, excessive withdraw fees). Are you kidding me? So if I pay $25 in fees, I don’t have to pay the $10. How freakin’ kind of you. They actually have the nerve to present this as some type of option that people would chose month after month rather than pay the $10. To soften the blow of this new fee, the creative writers at the bank decided to add to the letter a number of significant things about my account that will not change. Let’s see, 1) free access to their ATM’s and branch offices. As opposed to what? Installing some sort of toll booth system where you pay just to walk in the door or use the ATM. 2) Free 24/7 telephone banking. Super duper awesome. I get access to some automated system that hasn’t been upgraded for 10 years, and costs you nothing to maintain. 3) Your account continues to be FDIC insured. OK, that is something that has been in effect for like the last century, and as far as I know no other banks have discontinued their accounts being FDIC insured, so let’s not try and make this out to be some type of novel feature that you can get at no other institution. After reading my letter, and coming to the disheartening realization I will be paying the $10 monthly fee, I began to imagine many new fees coming in the near future: 1) $5 charge for seeing a teller in person. Teller will smile and pretend like they actually care about you for an additional $3; 2) $6 monthly rope line divider maintenance fee because those things suffer some pretty serious wear and tear day in and day out; 3) account opener fee where they take 25% of your first deposit just to open your account, which is a minimum of $1000 to open (just in case you smarty smarts out there think you will just open your account with $25 to avoid a big fee); 4) and finally, the dreaded annual $25 “bend over and take it like a man” fee. Basically just an additional, extra fee because they can.