Well as most of you have seen from my FB posts earlier today, you will notice that I am not very happy with Suntrust Bank. Today I found out that they have "discontinued" their "Free" checking accounts and have moved all of those accounts to their "basic checking" and only after I logged into my account this morning and realized that they have assessed a $7 a month "maintenance" fee for each account. I have been a loyal client of theirs for over 11 years and I have had several Business and Personal accounts with them throughout that time. What upsets me the most is after having a "chat" with one of their reps, I was told that there are only two ways to waive such a fee, one was a direct deposit of over $100 or having, get this, a $500 minimum daily average balance in each account.
Now this is where it makes me angry. As most of us don't realize...these banks NEED our funds/deposits. They can't function without them. They take our funds, and lend them out to other people, in the forms of Mortgages, Lines of Credit, Credit cards etc. If they didn't have these funds on deposit they wouldn't be able to lend. And what's even funnier is that NOW they are trying to charge us fees to allow them to make even more money on our deposits. It's kind of like saying this: "John Doe gives Jane Smith $100 to lend to Jane Doe at a rate of 29.99% (credit card rates), and Jane Smith turns to John Doe and says you have to pay me a $7.00 monthly fee to me for allowing me that privledge" And all along, it's John Doe's money that is being lent out to others, of which he doesn't make a dime, AND he has to pay the fee to Jane Smith. Does this make any sense to anyone?
This is why I am angry. I use the Banking system out of pure convenience. I know they are going to lend my money out to other people and make a fortune on those funds. And I have been just fine with that because it affords me some convenience (i.e online bill pay etc). But where I draw the line is when banks think they are irreplacedable and start charging us for our own funds.
If you really think about it, why do they advertise? Why do they compete? They NEED our funds, we DON'T need them. So as a part of this entry, I challenge those of you from the US (because Canadian banks are very different) to push back against "maintenace fees", 'debit card fees" and any other fee they will try to charge you to access your own funds. Many credit unions allow for ABSOLUTELY free checking, AND everytime you use your debit card as a credit card (no PIN # entered), they actually give back to your local community. Unlike the bigger banks who actually get paid from Mastercard or Visa everytime you sign instead of enter your pin #, then have the NERVE to try and charge us to hold our funds in their bank, even though they NEED our funds to survive.
Think about this.... IF everyone pulled their money from all the banks in the world tomorrow, what would happen? Banks would cease to exist and collapse. Our money is like their blood, without it, they CAN"T SURVIVE!
And I refuse to stand by and allow this to continue to happen...
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