Bank of America’s new fees—$204 per year if I stay.!?

bank of americaAbout a month ago, I received a booklet in the mail from Bank of America. This evil booklet said that I could expect some changes with account statements, expanded account numbers, enhanced online banking, enhanced mobile banking (which I don’t use), ability to link more accounts to one debit card and monthly FEES. I’m sure you can understand how brilliantly excited I was for these to be implemented. *rolls eyes*

The only good thing, was that the fees would be waived for my first two statements following October 14th. I am grateful that they are giving procrastinators like me time to close our accounts to avoid such fees. :-) Not everybody will have to pay these fees, it depends on what state you bank in and what accounts you have. There are also ways to avoid the fees, but that won’t work for some people.

Account #1 MyAccess Checking:

Monthly Fee: $12.00
Meet at least 1 of the following to waive your monthly fee:
♦ Have at least one direct deposit, such as payroll or Social Security payment, of $250 or more each month
♦ Keep an average daily balance of $1,500 or more in your account

Why it doesn’t work for me:
Direct deposit- I don’t have a job or receive Social Security. Sure my husband has a job, but we have that direct deposited to our US Bank joint account and it works perfectly. For me, Bank of America isn’t great enough for me to go through the paperwork of adding an additional direct deposit from my honey’s check and having to transfer $hit around every other week.
Average Daily Balance- $1,500 sitting in a non-interest earning account, are you kidding us, Bank of America? Who does that? Not me.

Account #2 FirstChoice Market Rate Savings (keep the change savings account):

Monthly Fee: $5.00
Meet at least 1 of the following to waive your monthly fee:
♦ Have a monthly automatic transfer of $25 or more from your Bank of America checking account to this savings account
♦ Maintain a minimum daily balance of $300 or more in this account
♦ Link this account to a Bank of America Advantage checking account.

Why it doesn’t work for me:
$25 transfer- I’m not going to be paying $12 a month to keep the checking, so obviously it would be silly for me to have a monthly transfer. Even if I did keep the checking, I don’t send money to our Bank of America account very often, so I’d probably end up forgetting to have money in there to cover it.
$300+ daily balance- This really isn’t that big of a deal since I was working on filling up this account as one of my financial goals. This savings account barely earns any interest at all, really, I think it’s just an illusion.
Linking to Advantage checking account- First off, I don’t have one, but it’s not that difficult to open new accounts. Aside of course from the fact that the minimum to avoid fees for the Advantage accounts is $10,000; if you don’t meet the minimum, there is a $25 monthly fee. Lame.

Conclusion: Bank of America hasn’t been that spectacular in my experience to pay $204.00 a year to continue my banking relationship with them. Sure, their Keep the Change program was awesome for the first 3 months (I totally kicked @ss and earned $170-ish back after being with them for a year) but it’s not worth my time anymore. So, I’ll be closing my accounts with Bank of America before they start charging me to let them borrow my money.

Honestly, I’d just do it now and get it over with, but this is the bank where my checks are. We only use checks to pay our rent, but thankfully, the magnificent Capital One 360 (formerly ING Direct) now has checks. You can get 50 of them for $5.00 and those will last us about…50 months, that sounds great to me. All I have to do now is update my last name (yeah, I know—I got married over 2 years ago) with them and then order some checks.

 

Anybody else dealing with this?
What would you do?


Click here to start saving with Capital One 360

About Jen Perkins

Likes: saving money, being debt free (aside from our house), zombies, travel, getting money, blogging and dogs. Dislikes: debt, being broke, bunnies, wasting money, not having enough money to travel the world and paying interest. Facebook  ♥  Twitter  ♥  Google+  ♥  RSS

Comments

Bank of America’s new fees—$204 per year if I stay.!? — 8 Comments

  1. Good grief! I’m glad I got out of bank of america a couple of years ago, before all this happened! It’s a nice kick in the rear to those customers that didn’t really like them but didn’t make the effort to switch banks :). Now, hopefully everyone will have incentive to switch bank and see how nice other banks are…

  2. Eww… I’ve never banked with Bank of America but I have and currently bank with Chase, and it’s almost just as bad. The fees vary but it has the same kind of tune, and I have already begun closing my accounts and moving to a new bank.

    Have you tried PerkStreet Financial? They only offer a personal checking account right now, but are working really hard to get a savings account and business accounts rolling. They offer 2% cash back on all non-PIN debit card purchases. I’ve already earned almost $100 in the past 2 months.

    I like ING Direct too, and I have a savings account with them. I’m just not sure how/when the service will change since Capital One took over. I left Capital One for ING like 8 years ago, and I’m not keen on working with them again.

    • It’s crazy how these banks are starting to charge all these new fees. US Bank started this a few months back and I ended up closing my personal accounts with them. I haven’t even looked into PerkStreet Financial yet, but I keep seeing their ads all over the place. Nice to hear they’re working out for you, I’ll have to look into them one of these days.

      I know, I’m so scared that Capital One is going to f*ck up ING. :-( Hopefully they’ll be smart and leave it be.

  3. I’m a bit iffy about capital one and ING but I made the switch to ING a while ago, loving the free first booklet of checks! It’s been working out great so far, so great in fact that my other remaining account (that I pay $6 a month for) will also very soon be closed, since they’re upping their fees AGAIN. *sigh*

    • Lots of banks are doing this lately. :-( Free first booklet of checks at ING, that’s really cool. Hopefully I’ll score the same deal.

  4. These banks are so sneaky. What a way to keep your customers! I can understand why some people refuse to save their money in banks. As soon as it’s there, the banks want to kill you with their fees!

    • They really are, and it seems with how things are going they’d realize that charging new fees might not be in their best interest.