My first ever blog from the car using my iPod.

Bank of America is rumored to begin charging $5 a month for debit cards.

I’ve been warning about this for years. Step one is get you hooked and step two is to shove it up your ass.

So long B of A. Closing my account is going to feel great!

Update: Added picture and the following text.

Now that I’m home I can add a few additional details about the colonoscopy sponsored by Bank of America and other financial institutions across this great land of ours.

In Bank of America’s scheme, the account holder will be charged a $5 monthly fee if they use their debit card a single time in a given month. The fee is scheduled to begin early in 2012.

Other banks are joining in. Wells Fargo and Chase are “testing” $3 fees. I wonder what that means? A focus group of consumers to find out how much they like it? Doubtful.

Regions Financial plans a $4 fee starting next month. SunTrust is apparently already charging a $5 fee.

Tom’s Law #42
Let the banking customer beware.

Okay, that’s not really a law. Sorry. I lost my interest. I could fix it, but I’d have to charge a fee.

Other fees are a hippin’ and a hoppin’, too. The fees that some banks charge for “non-network” ATM usage will be going from $2.00 to $2.50 per transaction.

Some other fees I’ve heard about:

• $1.00 – saying hello (friendly) to your banking representative
• $42.00 – saying “fuck you” to your banking representative
• $1.00/hour for parking in the lot or $10 for a 24-hour pass
• $8.00 monthly surcharge for printed statements
• $5.00 monthly surcharge for access to online banking
• $2.00 for printed receipts
• $5.00 for phone calls (first 15 minutes), $3 for each additional 15 minutes
• 12 dozen Krispy Kreme donuts per parking lot use for non-profit car wash fund raising events
• $3.00 to check account balance
• $1.00 rental fee for pen usage when filling out deposit or withdrawal slips
• $4.00 fee to check your ID when conducting transactions with a teller (non-robotic only)
• One percent interest fee on all savings accounts
• One percent deposit fee
• Three percent transfer fee
• Five percent withdrawal fee
• $8.00 fee per money order
• $25.00 fee per cashier’s check
• $84.00 fee for insufficient funds transaction
• $800 processing fee to fake signatures on loan foreclosures
• $30 per incident to wear sunglasses inside a branch office
• $7.99 to ask a bank employee the location of the bathroom
• $10.00 to use the bathroom
• $8.00 for toilet paper (optional)
• $12.00 for soap to wash hands
• $8.42 for water to use the soap
• $4.00 for towel to dry hands
• $20 fee for attempting to transfer money to WikiLeaks

That’s all I can think of right now. I wonder if they have any current openings for Fee Designer. I could go for a career change. B of A execs – call me! I’m cheap!

In late December [2010] it was announced that Bank of America had bought up more than 300 Internet domain names in a would-be attempt to preempt bad publicity that might be forthcoming in the anticipated WikiLeaks release. The domain names were such as BrianMoynihanBlows.com and BrianMoynihanSucks.com as well as similar names for other top executives of the bank. Nick Baumann of Mother Jones ridiculed this effort, saying: “If I owned stock in Bank of America, this would not give me confidence that the bank is prepared for whatever Julian Assange is planning to throw at it.”

Source: Wikipedia

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Right now, you’re probably asking, “Yeah, but what about the rainforest?” You ask, I deliver!

Rainforest Action Network Statement on Bank of America’s New Emissions Commitment

May 18, 2011SAN FRANCISCO (May 18, 2011)—Today, Bank of America announced a new greenhouse gas emissions reduction commitment covering its ‘operational’ emissions coming from the company’s global facilities. The announcement can be found here: http://mediaroom.bankofamerica.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=234503&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1565219&highlight.

Amanda Starbuck, Energy and Finance Program Director at Rainforest Action Network, issued the following statement in response:

“While we welcome Bank of America’s continued acknowledgment that reducing greenhouse gas emission is critical to combating the climate crisis, the bank must move quickly to address the much larger carbon footprint coming from its role as a lead financier of the coal industry. RAN estimates that Bank of America’s financing climate footprint is to be one hundred times larger than the size of its operational carbon footprint.

Source: RAN.org

Thanks for the reminder to check up on all the B of A controversies. All publicity is good, right? You guys sure have that nailed.

So, what does an outfit like B of A teach us about something like the free market? The takeaway (for me at least) is that they are expert practitioners of the mythical win-win voluntary fee market transaction that many hold so dear. Ooops. Dear me. I meant free market, of course.

In this sort of transaction, one side says, “Yes, I’ll conduct business with you, but only if I can rake you for every penny you’ve got. I can fee you for anything. Naturally, you can’t fee me for jack shit, no matter how ineptly and rudely I do what I said I’d do but massively failed.”

If I treated my customers the way B of A treats theirs I’d have to live in a box. I could probably get one from B of A for a $12 fee.