BofA Calls Off Debit-Fee Plan

Wall Street Journal ^ | November 1, 2011 | Dan Fitzpatrick

[Deo volente]

Bank of America Corp. is dropping its plan to charge customers $5 a month for making purchases with their debit cards, a person familiar with the situation said.

[moehoward]

[Not A Snowbird]

I wonder how much business these banks lost before doing their reversal? I know Wells Fargo lost mine, and they won’t get it back.

[DarthVader]

The Sicilian Message worked.

[oh8eleven]

BofA Calls Off Debit-Fee Plan
At least they realized they made a huge mistake.
Even though Netflix lost over 800,000 subscribers, they never changed their new pricing plan. Idiots.

[RockinRight]

They’ll make it up somewhere else.

[ilgipper]

I don’t blame my bank for these charges. It is the direct result of bad government policy.

The idea of inserting this large new fee was poorly done by BoA and the other banks. Mine followed BoA’s lead and also backed off. They needed to handle this fee totally differently, from a customer perspective.

[109ACS]

I have a rule. Since we are in a recession and I haven’t had a pay raise in over 2 years, whenever a company I do business with raises its prices, I find someone else to do business with. Goodbye Regions Bank, goodbye Netflix. I will find an alternative or I do without. Once I leave a company, I never go back.

[RockinRight]

The reason for this whole fiasco was the Durbin Amendment. FWIW, BOA only expected to recover HALF of their lost revenues due to Durbin.

So, that means, they’ll make it up elsewhere. They have to.

[Deo volente]

I think the other banks not following suit, as well as customers fleeing in droves, made their decision an easy one.

BofA stock is down 6% today and 52% for the year so far.

[albie]

Obama won’t like this. The free market working and all. Time to take over B of A and all other banks and force feed the $5.00.

[The_Reader_David]

D*mned shame Congress imposing regulations on behalf of retailers pushed them to make the bone-headed decision in the first place, but in this case, the market worked.

[Mr. Bird]

As a customer of BofA, I never could get worked up over this. Had they made some sort of unilateral business decision to charge me more, I'd likely go in and negotiate terms. As it happens, I would not have been affected under the proposed changes anyway.

But I never blamed them to begin with. If Congress passed a law that essentially reduced my revenues by millions (if not billions) of dollars, I'd probably look for a way to make that up as well. The press has been completely dishonest in covering this.

[Vaduz]

Credit unions snicker,gains customers.

[Not A Snowbird]

I blame Congress.

I’m happy with USAA. They don’t play around fees and they don’t sell my information to third party marketers.

[Not A Snowbird]

Yes, I know it was Durbin’s fault.

I had one foot out the door with Wells Fargo anyway. No matter whose fault it is, I choose not to pay the extra fee when USAA doesn’t charge me (and in fact reimburses me to use a non-USAA ATM...)

[Buckeye McFrog]

I suppose they thought better of it and did not want to be first in line to be tossed to the lions by Barackus Maximus to delight the crowds at the OWS Coliseum, eh?

[Gamecock]

I wonder how much business these banks lost before doing their reversal? I know Wells Fargo lost mine, and they won’t get it back.

To late here as well. I'm in the process of changing over to USAA.

[Not A Snowbird]

Good move. I’ve been very happy with them.

[Alberta's Child]

I think Bank of America learned a difficult lesson about what I call the “public utility” concept in consumer finance. Once a consumer gets used to a certain product or service as part of their everyday life, they gradually begin to see it as a God-given right and expect it to cost little or nothing.