Not affiliated with the link above or any Credit Union in particular.
Caveat emptor. Etcetera, ad nauseum.
I almost went with Wells Fargo because I deposit cash in ATMs a lot and their new-fangled ATMs would remedy the occassional problem of not having a deposit available even though it was cash because the envelope doesn’t know any better.
Then, without me even asking, my Credit Union - which only has about half a dozen branches - got those ATMs. Awesome.
I was under the (possibly mistaken) impression that merchants and banks favored the debit card because there were no paper checks to handle. It’s all automated.
Is there no upside for debit cards for the banks?
Hmmm. I’ve been with BofA for a while. While they are evil, I’m not sure moving to a credit union would be the best choice for me. I travel overseas a lot, and in 20+ countries my BofA card has never let me down- which can be a big deal if you are stranded in Ulaan Batar.
$5.00 a month isn’t a dealbreaker, but with the fees they suddenly decided to spring on me a while back, it’s starting to stick in my craw. I’m not sure the hassle that would come with working with a credit union overseas would be worth it, though.
You have enough money to buy or gas, or eat, but not both. Which do you pick?
A dilemma I faced more than once in my life.
Answer: usually the food, and I would ride my bike to work. Sometimes in the winter, impossible to bike to work, then the gas and I would deal without a meal for a day or so.
Not once did I decide to write myself an informal loan and dictate to the bank what it could charge me in fees.
It doesn’t really matter what you were saying if it was totally fucking stupid. And, it was. Overdrafts have essentially nothing to do with the $5 mos fee. First off, the article is saying that the $5.00 only applies if you use the card for purchases. You can use the card as an atm, and you can write checks and not get hit with $5 fee. Checkwriting is usually what will put you into an overdraft, not your card. If you have no money for a purchase, your card can simply be denied. Writing a bad check is an overdraft.
Using the card for purchases does not increase the overdraft risk and has nothing nothing to do with the $5 fee. The reason for the $5 fee that starts on October 1, is because the Durbin act goes into effect and prevents debit cards from charging merchants the same fee as they do with credit cards, rendering them less or completely unprofitable. So, they are making up the money by charging $5 a month to their customers who use the card for purchases.
As I said before, overdrafts is a whole other issue and is unconnected. Your assuming there is a connection is pretty much proof positive that you are talking out your ass.
It’s possible, but probably not, and if is true, it has nothing to do with his debit card fees. It’s possible because most banks tier their clients, under the assumption that their smaller clients are more likely to end up in overdraft situations than their clients with megabucks on deposit, and they charge fees accordingly. So, if Bricker is a pissant client, yet scrupulous with his tiny checking account it is possible he is carrying the weight of other folks.
The fact of the matter though is that overdraft regulation has sadly become a necessity, as some banks have become predatory in their practices in this regard as a way to enhance profits.
Sure, and I’m saying that you are total fucking moron for saying so. Regulation is no more a good or bad thing than surgery is. Regulation where regulation is needed is essential, just as surgery can be essential where it is needed.
Regulation where it is not needed is a bad thing, just as surgery where it is not needed is a bad thing.
In either case bad regulation, or bad surgery or both really terrible things.
So, saying something like “government regulation of debit card fees is a good thing” is moronic. Good regulation is required, but only if it is needed. Now, in the case of overdrafts, I applaud the government’s actions in stopping abuses fairly and equitably. I also applaud the idea of limiting atm fees.
However, the merchant fees on debit cards which are identical to the standard and fair fees on credit cards which are charged not to the customer but to the merchant, and which therefore are already being borne by the consumer in terms of higher costs are… fucking great.
This is the one area that has clearly not been broken. This is the one area where the little guy is actually getting a benefit paid for by the bigger guy. There is absolutely no logically reason to take away this revenue stream. It’s possibly the one thing that is fair and justified. Taking it away actually increases the cost on the consumer, but only the poor consumer.
Yeah, I know, but you’re like the insane clown posse rapping about how magnets work, and claiming it’s a miracle, and that they don’t want to hear from any lying scientists otherwise.
It makes you not only look stupid. It means you are stupid.
Listen up moron, the change does not hurt me at all. It doesn’t hurt wealthy people at all. The banks aren’t charging the wealthy any fees based on this, because they make too much money off the wealthy and can’t afford to alienate them. If a client is charging 100k a year and producing 3k in revenue are you going to risk pissing them off and losing their business by charging them $5 mos.
Of course not.
What they do is convert their debit card into a credit card which is eligible for the merchant fees under the Durbin act. To do this, must have the possibility of a floating balance and an interest rate. However, at the time they switch the card, they also have a client sign an ACH which has the full balance deducted from their checking account as a month end summary debit.
To compensate them for the pain in the ass of having to sign to pieces of paper the bank is giving them an extra 25,000 points now, and double points on their spend through the end of the year.
What this means is that the high end clients will actually profit from this.
The low end clients will receive no such benefits, because, for a variety of reasons, converting their debit cards into credit cards is impractical.
So no, you moron. I’m not pissed off that it’s unfair to me.
I think, personally, there’s a profound difference between “support a law that says banks may not generally choose any arbitrary order in which to process transactions” and “dictate to the bank what it could charge me in fees”.
Single, no kids, I am sure.
After the 30th, if you use it for purchases the bank will likely be losing money on it.
For the first time in a long time, I have to say that Scylla’s got pretty much right.
The new regs on overdraft fees have been extant for months now. Banks (especially big banks) reacted to those by jacking up static account fees (in other words, your account has a $12 monthly fee instead of being free, or maybe only costing you $6 per month).
This new debit-card thing is a reaction to the Durbin Act.
Luckily, the bank I work for won’t be doing it…but then, we are a conservative lending agency and didn’t really get into the mortgage market and certainly never did subprime mortgages, nor did we invest in derivatives that involved subprime mortgages. But we also didn’t do the predatory-overdraft stuff that other banks did.
Shame we only have 5 branches.
It’s possible to avoid getting a traffic ticket by not speeding. That doesn’t mean a guy who gets a $10,000 speeding ticket doesn’t have a legitimate gripe.
So, I’m pretty sure I have unlimited checking, so if I go back to writing checks at all the stores I shop at, how is that good for the bank?
Im almost always right. It’s just that this is one of the few times that you have special expertise in an area that allows you the insights to see the deeper truths to which I, as a superior entity, am privy 
Would you be OK letting your children go without food so you had gas to drive to work? What if you had to choose between going to the doctor to get antibiotics and paying for your kid’s school lunches? Are you saying that there would never be a chance, ever, that you would consider overdrafting? It’s a stupid argument; just because you’ve never been desperate enough doesn’t mean it’s okay to take advantage of the desperate. Lots of people took an overdraft because they think “okay, I need to fix this situation somehow, and I’m willing to pay $35 on payday”… not realizing that it would be more like $300+ by the way it all worked out.
Nobody’s saying that the consumer should get to pick and choose whatever fees they pay. Legislation was put in place that set limits for fees because banks had proven that they were willing to use “gotcha” tactics to exploit the poor. It’s perfectly fair to charge for overdrafts; it’s not fair to stack the entire system in favor of racking up hundreds to thousands of dollars in fees when a customer makes a mistake. They marketed it as “protection”, but made it difficult or impossible for customers to turn down this protection so that the card would just decline (the way that credit cards do, and the way that would benefit most consumers). Banks moved transactions out of chronological order when it benefited them. It was predatory, and it was bullshit, and it trapped a lot of people in a cycle of paying the bank in return for essentially nothing in return.
I get that we don’t want to reward a lack of responsibility, and I get that a fee should be charged – but it should be in a clear, straightforward fashion. Now, you can still get this overdraft protection if you want it – but you’re not forced to, the way that you basically were before (due to lack of competition). Customers seem not to want this “protection” that they were basically forced to accept before (good luck finding a bank without these practices, even small banks).
The fewer checks you write, and the bigger your balance, the more the bank likes you.
“Free checking” but “not free debit carding” suggests otherwise.
So having in that place myself I know a person isn’t at their most rational, especially when hungry.
So your position is that if someone in that situation decides not to get fired for absentism or starve they deserve what ever the bank does to them?
If not where do you draw the line at excessive?
What you don’t understand is that the whole dynamic is changing in two days.
Until October 1, the banks would lose small amounts of money on free checking accounts as you wrote checks, but they didn’t care because they were making it up in merchant card fees.
On October 1, they will still lose the small amount of money on checking accounts as you write checks but they will suddenly be losing money on your merchant debit card transactions at a bigger rate than checks and they are therefore charging you to cover the costs.
I imagine that free checking which was largely subsidized by merchant card transactions, will also be getting more and more endangered. You will likely see the banks becoming increasingly more selective in regard to who “qualifies” for free checkin.
Well, sorry you had to type out all this blah blah then, because I was only talking about the semi-recent overhaul of overdraft fees, which people were initially discussing as a possible reason for the $5 BofA debit card fee and which I thought you were including in your initial “good for no one” post, given the context of the posts immediately preceding it. Rereading the thread in light of your most recent posts makes it clear that I misunderstood what you were initially saying. So I apologize for my posts to you in this thread, as they were in fact mostly stupid.
(Damn, I hate when I discover I’m totally wrong after I’ve gotten some good hyperbole going. What a waste.)
Fair enough, then.