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Bank fees are in the spotlight again. The Wall Street Journal reported that Bank of America is planning to roll out new checking account fees, and the news stirred up negative sentiment in the social mediaverse almost immediately, with consumers reacting angrily to the idea. Chase, meanwhile, wants to charge customers even more than the $12 some of them are already paying each month. Following last year’s controversial (and ham-handed) attempts to implement debit card fees, banks are treading more carefully these days. But the latest news indicates that fees are going to remain a hot-button issue in the months ahead.


But Pace does confirm one aspect of Bank of America’s plans. While the WSJ speculated that the bank’s bottom-tier checking account would come with a mandatory monthly fee that couldn’t be waived under any circumstances, Pace says that idea’s not on the table. “All our current and future accounts offer ways to avoid fees,” she says.

This may or may not be good news for consumers, depending on what those ways consist of. Last fall, with Bank of America and Chase embroiled in debit-fee disputes, Citibank announced it would not implement a debit fee and then debuted a new line-up of checking accounts with significantly higher minimum balance requirements for a customer to avoid monthly fees.

And Chase — the largest bank in the country by assets — seems to be going out of its way to ruffle the feathers of the 99% this week. In a conference Tuesday, a Chase executive told investors that 70% of customers with less than $100,000 in deposits or investments would be unprofitable for the bank if new regulations like overdraft fee caps are implemented.

This is the same argument we’ve heard from banks before: A government agency examines a practice or fee — usually one that’s generated a lot of consumer dissatisfaction — and banks predict huge increases in the costs customers will have to bear if regulatory action is taken. http://moneyland.time.com/2012/03/01/bank-of-america-chase-fees-target
-of-consumer-ire-again/

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