The typical town’s main drag seems to have a bank in every third or fourth storefront, often with branches from the same institution within a few blocks of each other. But do consumers really need banks to be as ubiquitous as …
checking accounts
Why Your Checking Account Is Getting More Expensive
Long the workhorse of the financial mainstream, the checking account has undergone a radical evolution in recent months. Banks are shifting to the business model embraced by airlines, unbundling a product and adding fees on an a …
How to Launch a Counteroffensive Against Bank Fees
You’ve heard the news (banks are piling on the fees), and you’re not happy about it (most big banks get D grades). Now it’s time to do something about it.
111 Pages of Disclosures for the Typical Checking Account?!?
According to a new study, checking accounts at the nation’s ten largest banks come with a median length of 111 pages of disclosure documents. Getting to the bottom of all of your account’s requirements, fee schedules, addendums, and other terms and conditions is like reading a short novel—a horrendously boring, annoyingly legalistic, …
Big Banks, Bigger Fees
You’ve heard all about the rise of bank fees—from $5 ATM charges to the disappearance of free checking and beyond. Now all of those pesky fees and annoying account policy requirements are presented in one handsome infographic.
Insider Insight: Why Banks Keep Jacking Up ATM Fees
“You really don’t care if you piss off someone else’s customer.”
Free Checking Becomes Fee Checking
The era of free checking appears to be on its last legs. For months, signs have been regularly appearing indicating that this day would come: early rumors that Bank of America would roll out fees to make up for lost revenues due to new overdraft regulations, BofA testing new checking fees around the country, other big banks such as Chase …
Bank of America’s New Checking Accounts Offer More Options, and (You Knew It!) More Fees
In a new pilot program, the biggest bank in the U.S. says it wants to provide customers with more checking account options—and more transparency regarding the fees that come along with each option. “We are trying to provide you choices on how you compensate us,” explained on BofA executive. What’s transparent about that statement is …
Coming in 2011: More Bank Fees
What with the number of checking accounts without minimum balance requirements on the decline, consumers are increasingly likely to be hit with monthly bills by their banks. Fees for ATM withdrawals, wire transfers, and other services are also on the rise.
How You Slowly Lose Money with Bank Accounts
Banks used to be good not just as holding pens for your money, but as places your money could grow slowly but surely. But considering the evil combo of rising fees and pathetic interest rates, the net result is a slow but sure loss of value even when there’s not much inflation. The main reasons for putting money in standard checking and …
Bank Accounts: Do the Free Cash Come-ons Outweigh the Fees Sure to Follow?
Major banks are offering cash incentives—$100, $200, even up to $300—to entice would-be customers into opening new accounts. But just as the banks giveth, they’re also more apt to take away in the form of new and rising fees. Oh, and when you look closely at the fine print for many of these cash reward come-ons, the banks aren’t …
Bank On It: Free Checking Is Disappearing, and Service Fees, ATM Fees, and Checking Fees Are Rising
A new study shows that bank customers are getting less and being charged more for services they’ve come to expect as standard in plain old checking accounts.
