I got this in my email this morning:
When Molly Katchpole found out that Bank of America would charge $5 a month to use a debit card, she was upset — so she started a petition on Change.org.
Since then, 225,000 Change.org members have signed her petition. And now Bank of America is under enormous pressure to cancel its new debit card fee. A Bank of America executive even called Molly and told her that while cancelling the fee would be “premature,” the bank was “closely monitoring customer feedback.”
More public pressure could be enough to push the bank to cancel its new $5 debit card fee. Can you sign Molly’s petition asking Bank of America to cancel its new debit card fee? Bank of America is listening to you — and other banks are, too.
In less than three weeks, Bank of America went from announcing a new $5 monthly debit card fee, to reeling under huge pressure from the media, Congress, and Change.org members. Here’s a quick review of what happened:
- September 29: Bank of America announces a new $5 monthly debit card fee.
- September 30: Molly creates her petition on Change.org; more than 150,000 people sign in the next 5 days.
- October 5: The petition becomes a major national story. ABC News interviews Molly, then tracks down Bank of America’s CEO Brian Moynihan and forces him to respond to it.
- October 6: Molly delivers 153,000 petitions to Bank of America and closes her account. She appears on ABC World News again to discuss the petition. Local media in Charlotte (where Bank of America is based) openly speculate that the growing controversy could lead to the firing of Moynihan.
- October 9: Molly is featured in a major article in the New York Times as an example of the public’s frustration with big banks.
- October 10: Bank of America executive Andrew Pepler calls Molly Katchpole to discuss her petition.
- October 13: Molly meets with Congressman Brad Miller to discuss a bill in Congress to make it easier to switch banks. The two later appear on CNN together.
- October 18: Molly’s petition reaches 225,000, as Bank of America reports a $6 billion profit. The outrage continues to grow.
Other banks are paying attention to the public reaction to Bank of America’s new debit card fee. Citibank even said its “customers made it abundantly clear” that they wouldn’t like a debit card fee.
What’s next in this campaign to cancel Bank of America’s $5 debit card fees? It’s up to you.
Please sign the petition demanding Bank of America cancel its new $5 monthly debit card fee. Click here to add your name:
http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-bank-of-america-no-5-debit-card-fees
Thanks for being a change-maker,
– Jess and the Change.org team
Now I can appreciate Molly’s ire at the boost in fees, just as much as I can appreciate why BOA added the new fee, but the problem is, BOA is under no obligation to pay any attention to a petition the way a government is supposed to.  I understand the confusion: BOA is huge, has a history of bureaucratic incompetence, levies fees like the government levies taxes, and is so in bed with the federal government that it is hard to remember the distinction.  But still, BOA is a private company, and as such, a petition is merely an advisory note telling BOA that some random cross section of people in the US are unhappy with something.  And since that cross section is random, a good percentage of the undersigned will NOT be customers of BOA.  As a matter of fact, unless BOA can verify that a significant majority of the undersigned ARE customers, the smart move would be to just weather the storm until people get used to the $5 and shut up.
The smart thing for Molly, and BOA customers like her, to do is to move their money to a credit union (or similar) and close their BOA accounts down, while letting BOA know why they are moving their money. Â That is how you express displeasure with a private company, you take your business elsewhere! Â Petitions exist for government because you can’t just change governments as easily when your current one annoys you.
I thought they taught this stuff in grade school?
No, you’re supposed to be lazy and appeal to the government to crush everyone who doesn’t do what you want… because changing banks is such a drag.
Seriously, I dumped BOA almost ten years ago because they simply sucked to do business with. I wasn’t even dealing with fees. If you STILL work with BOA, you’re a sucker, period.
I would think the petition is aimed at the wrong outfit, the fee is a response to the actions by the government/Obamey. Dod Frank bill or sum such. If the $5 fee is not kept in place it will be someplace else as its a method of getting some of the operating costs that the Marxist Obamey took away with his nutso regulations.
Sulaco
That is what the fee is in response to, but the fee itself is about as necessary as ATM fees are, as evidenced by the fact that my CU, which operates at much thinner profit margins than banks like BOA, have not even thought about instituting ATM or debit transaction fees.
The $5 fee is just a way to transfer the money they were getting from merchants to the card holder. Honestly, the limit on what banks can charge merchants is a good thing, since it either forces the bank to stop dinging other businesses, or it forces the bank to make the cost obvious to the consumer (which it wasn’t before).
This is another example of the arrogant, clumsy, interfering regulatory thumb of government coming down on the mechanism of free market, distorting it, and then claiming the regulating thumb of government is necessary because the free market failed to withstand the distortion of the regulatory thumb!
“Molly meets with Congressman Brad Miller to discuss a bill in Congress to make it easier to switch banks.”
What am I missing here? Is it really that hard to switch banks? Don’t you simply close your account at Bank A and open an account at Bank B?
Even if 99.9% of all of there customerss signed the petition BoA’s management will ignore it, because they DON’T work for the depositors. They work for the stockholders. Hell, BoA’s management has a fiduciary duty to maximize the value of the company, they’d get sued if they just cancelled the fee without replacing the lost interchange revenue with something else.
Now, if a stockholder got a measure on the next stock proxy directing the managers to cancel the monthly fee that *would* be different…
Rick T – Good point!