Yesterday, Bank of America became the last major bank to retract its monthly fee for using a debit card. This ill-advised move was overturned by a strong consumer revolt. How strong? Strong enough that Regions Bank here in the South also changed its mind in just one month. Credit unions and small banks have all reported sudden increases in membership. It used to be that people placed their money in large banks both because there was supposedly less chance of their failing and because they might have a friendly branch in a town to which they had to travel. However, with today’s debit cards and with the financial scandals associated with large institutions, it is no longer “necessary” for people to be part of a large bank. However, inertia keeps people from moving their banking to a smaller institution. That is, until the large banks so abused their depositors that they overcame their inertia in their anger.
This might be the shot in the arm that smaller organizations such as credit unions need in order to be able to keep serving the public. It certainly is a message to financial institutions that they cannot get away with anything they wish to do, as they have been doing previously.
“This might be the shot in the arm that smaller organizations such as credit unions need in order to be able to keep serving the public. It certainly is a message to financial institutions that they cannot get away with anything they wish to do, as they have been doing previously.”
Father, this is what the Move Your Money Project was trying to get people to do a couple of years ago. Simple. Join a credit union or cooperative bank, or at least a local chain and pull it out of the big corporate banks. They’ll get the message.
Watch this 4-minute video that puts it into perspective with the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icqrx0OimSs
The Move Your Money Project can be found at: http://moveyourmoneyproject.org/
I’ve been primarily a “credit union man” for years, and I’ve been recommending my friends to go credit union for almost that long. Not only do you get a generally-better deal from a CU than a bank, but membership prereqs for some CUs are as open as “do you live in this county?”
Leading the way…
Come to think of it, BofA was the first major bank to charge a fee for such a thing.