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Here's how the new debit card rules were passed, which led Bank of America to start charging a fee for debit card use...
Big retailers, led by WalMart hated paying debit card fees. They could have added a fee onto the customers tab to recoup. Many stores already do this. Arco, a large gas station chain, has been doing it as long as I remember. This 'user pays' model is doubtless the fairest. The guy who pays cash does not have to subsidize (thru higher prices) the guy who pays plastic. But WalMart didn't like the idea.
They could have avoided the fees through 'in store' cards, another thing gas stations have long done, and many large department stores. Again, idea declined.
So Walmart found a much cheaper, easier, and more underhanded solution. They hired Sen. Dick Durbin's ex-press sec'y, Melissa Merz, as lobbyist. A fundraiser was arranged, attended by Merz and another ex-Durbin staffer-turned-lobbyist. A couple of $5000 checks exchanged hands, one from WalMart Pac.
Sen. Durbin sheparded through a law to restrict the charging of fees to stores. A Home Depot exec told some of his investors on a conference call that the restrictions would mean as much as $35 million additional in Home Depot's coffers. For WalMart you can probably multiply that by at least 5, which would come to $175 million. That's an incredible ROI, BTW, for the $5000 donation along with whatever they paid Ms. Merz (doubtless a pretty penny there).
I'm not going to say the banks are as pure as snow. They're as sleazy, and as much in bed with skank politicians as WalMart is. But how in heck do libs make BOA out to be the bad guy in this situation? And libs please explain why now you're in effect defending WalMart, after most of you have been bashing them for years, often just for selling stuff at a cheap price? File under bassackwards. Cross reference to upside down and inside out.
your assuming that banks dd not do this in the past? Its a wrold of politcs and avanatge. In the end the customer will pay either way ;it just politics of how. One wants forced in one way and the opther wants it forced i anther way. Its really no different than other measures past that will just shift the burden in other ways to consumers really.Bascailly wa;-mart and o0ther didn't want it forced o them to collect from consumers;pretty simple really.
Here's how the new debit card rules were passed, which led Bank of America to start charging a fee for debit card use...
...which led BOA to shift a portion of the cost of those transactions onto the customer who before now has been allowed to exist in dream world that didn't even know these costs existed; doing so by way of a flat fee applied only to customers who engage in those transactions *and* don't maintain a high enough average balance..
Other banks have elected to apply a fee to ALL debit card (ATM) holders even if they don't use them for purchases.
Would you prefer this approach?
They could have added a fee onto the customers tab to recoup.
Then the consumer gets pissed at the retailer.... it's not their fee and if banks want to charge for the use of their cards they should be the ones listing it on their customers bill. The retialer isn't losing money because it's added into the cost of the product, those paying cash are paying more than they should. It's very easy wway for banks to collect fees that the consumer doesn't know exists.
This hits small retailers even harder... My friend owns a small hardware store and the guy needed one small bolt, grand total of 50 cents and he wanted to pay for it with a card. He told the guy just take the damn thing becsue it was going to cost him more than 50 cents to process the payment.
Bank of America voluntarily dropped its fees. It voluntarily did this, as it found out the government was going to make them do it anyways.
Bank of America said it's the biggest bank to eliminate the fees so far and that it was reacting to customers' comments.
"Customers were saying, 'Don't let us spend money we don't have," spokeswoman Anne Pace said.
So even if you don’t carry a balance month to month, credit card companies still make money every time you use your card. As a result, it makes sense for them to offer incentives for more usage of plastic over paper. This is also why your bank encourages you to use your check card as a credit card and stores would prefer it if you used your PIN number.
While big chain stores like Wal-Mart or Target can leverage their business volume to negotiate down the merchant fees they pay to some degree, your typical mom and pop shop cannot. In order to make up that cost, businesses then have to raise prices for everyone and put the burden back on all their customers.
It’s illegal for businesses to only charge merchant fees for card-using customers, so they have to spread it out across the board
....overdraft fees is that they disproportionately are levied on the poor. The billionaire is not typically the one who pays these fees. About 80% of bank fees are paid by 20% of bank customers, and according to the FDIC low income (people who earn less than $30,000) earners are nearly twice as likely to have paid an overdraft fee. Even worse, it is not uncommon for poor people to rack up many fees and owe the bank money they can not pay. Eventually their account is closed by the bank. Once your account is closed it’s extremely difficult to open an account at another bank. The fees shut the poor out of formal banking.
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So here's the kicker:
Since the banks can't make money off of the old suckers / or the poor the old way, they get to make money off of even more people the new way. In other words, me.
That's right, ME. Mr. Greedy (Mr. Responsible?) , right here. I don't pay a dime for bank service fees. Or overdraft charges. But that is soon to change.
Banks have decided to stop having one particular group of people pay for most of the other people's perks to having a larger group of people pay for everyone's perks and to enlarge the banks bottom line. Credit card companies have been doing this for years. Those people who actually pay credit card fees have been subsidizing my rewards for years.
Which is similiar to Obamacare. The people with the greater ability to pay get tasked to pay for everyone. However, unlike Obamacare, I'm not seeing how millions could benefit from this.
Location: On the "Left Coast", somewhere in "the Land of Fruits & Nuts"
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wutitiz
I'm not going to say the banks are as pure as snow. They're as sleazy, and as much in bed with skank politicians as WalMart is. But how in heck do libs make BOA out to be the bad guy in this situation? And libs please explain why now you're in effect defending WalMart, after most of you have been bashing them for years, often just for selling stuff at a cheap price? File under bassackwards. Cross reference to upside down and inside out.
So you're more worried about who libs "defend" than you are about "sleazy banks"?
Ignoring past history and focusing on this specific situation, WalMart got over on BOA. WalMart was the scoundrel, and BOA was the victim. Yet in my newspaper (the Seattle Times) Walmart wasn't even mentioned, and BOA was intimated to be the perp. The reader comments were filled with outrage against BOA. Again, I'm focusing on this specific story.
And yet libs, once informed, still think it all makes sense??? Go figure.
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