Bank of America charging standard accounts $12/month if you don't make or keep enough money - Sensationalist Headlines

Spoiler alert, every bank has thresholds for their accounts. It is how banks operate they're a fucking business, they don't care about you, never have, and this is nothing new.

goodness gracious talk about regressive taxing

[QUOTE=sgman91;53073520]It's probably more of a charge for people who open accounts and don't really use them. If you aren't getting a deposit of at least $250/month (That's a biweekly minimum wage check, working like 30 hours a week.), then you aren't poor, you're homeless and absolutely destitute.[/QUOTE]Orrrrr your workplace doesn't offer direct deposits like mine?

Banks are garbage, switch to a credit union.

[QUOTE=1/4 Life;53074117]Banks are garbage, switch to a credit union.[/QUOTE] Just buy gold and bury it, that way the government doesn't know.

the people this affects would almost certainly be better off storing their money under their matress as opposed to keeping it in a checking account

[QUOTE=BANNED USER;53073638]Wells Fargo does the same thing, except it's a $15.00 fee each month if you're poor like me.[/QUOTE] Yeah, I used to bank with them. Being charged money for wanting to have your finances in the 21st century is horse shit.

Currently use BoA, so far been an okay experience with them but if they start charging me this semester because I decided to stop working to focus on the last of my classes then they can fuck off.

How the hell does an inactive account cost money anyways? Nobody's individually looking at accounts manually, it's just a few entries in a database.

[QUOTE=nikomo;53074351]How the hell does an inactive account cost money anyways? Nobody's individually looking at accounts manually, it's just a few entries in a database.[/QUOTE] Banks are made to make money off money storage

[QUOTE=Scratch.;53074491]Banks are made to make money off money storage[/QUOTE] yeah they dont [i]make[/i] money off an empty account but the question is how do they [i]lose[/i] money on it especially 12 dollars a month

[QUOTE=nikomo;53074351]How the hell does an inactive account cost money anyways? Nobody's individually looking at accounts manually, it's just a few entries in a database.[/QUOTE] can't imagine a single account taking up more than a 1.5mb chunk of a microsoft access file or something; maybe multiply that a few times over for backups and data redundancy. a single account running $12 monthly hits $144 a year, and iirc good cloud storage services offer [b]terabytes[/b] for less than that price annually if smaller, local credit unions can survive without having to resort to this, then this bank, and ones like it, are nothing more than companies out to make the highest profit possible, imo

[QUOTE=elowin;53074506]yeah they dont [i]make[/i] money off an empty account but the question is how do they [i]lose[/i] money on it especially 12 dollars a month[/QUOTE] if you had half a million accounts with nothing, you'd still be using x amount of servers and storage to keep them up to make no money

[QUOTE=nikomo;53074351]How the hell does an inactive account cost money anyways? Nobody's individually looking at accounts manually, it's just a few entries in a database.[/QUOTE] It doesn't, directly. And its not about server storage either. But banks require special monitoring on dormant accounts, due to them being easy targets for a rogue employee for embezzlement. What this means in practice that every new transaction on a dormant account needs to be sent to one or two supervisory level employee to review and authorize. And even after that activity on the account requires additional monitoring for a certain amount of time. So from the banks point of view they ideally want to empty a dormant account with these fees, then they have the ability to close it. It's arguable whether these fees or conditions are fair, but they cannot be set arbitrarily high either due to escheatment laws.

[QUOTE=credesniper;53073670]I currently bank with them. They also charge you a fee if you come in and withdraw cash via a teller as a "maintenance fee".[/QUOTE] Its probably done to encourage using ATMs instead.

Guys, the solution is simple JUST DON'T BE POOR.

I'm surprised there are banks which does not take service fee. I can't think of any non-shady bank in Russia which will not take service fee unless you have a specific amount of money stored (usually 200-500$) or it's used as a salary account.

I had two bank accounts, one was always empty and kept getting charged 5 Euro every month/months (cant remember) so I just went off and closed it.

Do people think this is a new thing for banks or something? Banks don't like dormant accounts. They still take up time during nightly processing every single night and are big targets for fraud; it's definitely nothing like a "1.5mb Microsoft Access file" being stored on a hard drive. I wouldn't be surprised if low-activity accounts actually require more human intervention on average than the average Joe's account. I really don't want to sound like one of those "get a job" people, because I know it's hard for a lot. But [I]if[/I] you have any job at all you're almost certainly going to make $250 on a single paycheck. If you can't work and are on supplemental or welfare, well, your income is probably coming through some medium that doesn't require a bank anyway. Even understanding how frustrating it can be given the above, it's still not a new thing, like at all.

Are they saying that you need a minimum of $1,500 balance in your checking account to avoid the fee or that you need a minimum of $1,500 in savings and checking combined? Because I feel like it would probably be a bad idea to keep that much in a checking account.

[QUOTE=etrius0023;53074821]Are they saying that you need a minimum of $1,500 balance in your checking account to avoid the fee or that you need a minimum of $1,500 in savings and checking combined? Because I feel like it would probably be a bad idea to keep that much in a checking account.[/QUOTE] Just one or the other. $1,500 minimum balance OR a single $250 deposit each month. No mention of savings accounts so I assume it's all regarding one account in question.

The idea of paying for an account that's as basic as can be seems completely ludicrous. The only time in the UK you ever pay for an account is if you upgrade to get some goodies with the account or you have an overdraft. Complaining about processing time is pretty daft as well. If you're in a position where you know an account is inactive you can process that (and they probably do) on a complete different system whilst the other systems are doing their usual crunching. The fact it can even make you overdrawn seems to be the cherry on top :v:

[QUOTE=Teddi Orange;53074857]The idea of paying for an account that's as basic as can be seems completely ludicrous. The only time in the UK you ever pay for an account is if you upgrade to get some goodies with the account or you have an overdraft. Complaining about processing time is pretty daft as well. If you're in a position where you know an account is inactive you can process that (and they probably do) on a complete different system whilst the other systems are doing their usual crunching. The fact it can even make you overdrawn seems to be the cherry on top :v:[/QUOTE] If the account is non-zero then it's going to be processed the same as any other account, regardless if it's dormant or not. Then you get higher workload for human employees when a dormant account gets flagged for activity. Of course the bank charges inactive accounts and makes money off of it, but another good reason for doing so is to get the account to a zero balance in order to close it.

good thing i switched banks lmao

[QUOTE=KingofBeast;53074923]If the account is non-zero then it's going to be processed the same as any other account, regardless if it's dormant or not. Then you get higher workload for human employees when a dormant account gets flagged for activity. Of course the bank charges inactive accounts and makes money off of it, but another good reason for doing so is to get the account to a zero balance in order to close it.[/QUOTE] Then that's a cost of business they need to somewhat swallow. A bank even with a dormant account is making money off it - that $12 does nothing but screw the customer. I'd genuinely be surprised if it even cost them 50% of that to get this work done.

[IMG]https://u.lewd.se/SyEFNJ.png[/IMG]

I canceled my BofA account over this. It was especially shitty when my direct deposit was a few bucks short and they still took the fucking fee from me.

[QUOTE=Rageguy;53074950]good thing i switched banks lmao[/QUOTE] I would be surprised if your new bank didn't have this fee in some form, its a really common thing.

[QUOTE=haloguy234;53073654]Then when it overdraws because they tried to take $12 out of your $5 account because they keep taking your money, they'll try to take $50 out to pay the overdraft fee but it'll overdraw again, then they won't tell you for 3 months until you get a letter from debt collectors who arguably cost more money to employ than the menial $100 you owe for an overdraft fee. [sp]This may or may not have happened to me at one point in my life.[/sp][/QUOTE] That's not the banks fault it's yours. If your account gets that low and you don't have anything going into it then go close it. 250 in direct deposit isnt anything if you work even just part time. Making a big deal out of nothing.

[QUOTE=Scratch.;53074515]if you had half a million accounts with nothing, you'd still be using x amount of servers and storage to keep them up to make no money[/QUOTE] Yes, that 0.0001 cent is so important to the bottom line. [editline]23rd January 2018[/editline] [QUOTE=Sgt.Sgt;53075152]That's not the banks fault it's yours. If your account gets that low and you don't have anything going into it then go close it. 250 in direct deposit isnt anything if you work even just part time. Making a big deal out of nothing.[/QUOTE] I woudl like to note that this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. I work part time and until around...half way last year, my salary of 9 bucks working 30 hours a week came out to 217. Most part time jobs use minimum wage, I don't know where you got your fuzz math.