Bank of America will no longer charge monthly $5 fee to users

| Staff Reporter

In a reversal of a decision announced last month, Bank of America announced Tuesday that it will not charge customers a $5 monthly fee for using a debit card to purchase items.

The Bank’s initial decision announced on Oct. 1 sparked considerable backlash among its customers; an online petition against the fees at change.org received more than 300,000 signatures before Bank of America announced the retraction of the fee. The planned monthly $5 charge was set to go into effect in January.

Bank of America has a branch at Washington University, as well as multiple ATM machines on all of University campuses; as a result, it is by far the most convenient and most often-used bank by students, faculty and administrators.

Even if the fees had gone into effect, some students believed that they nevertheless would have continued using Bank of America out of convenience.

“Bank of America is very convenient for us and there is a high switching cost, and if I had another card, I’d have to take the ATM fees into account anyways,” junior Peter Birke said.

Still, Birke is pleased about the removal of the fees.

“As someone who has a Bank of America account, I am happy that they changed their mind,” Birke said.

Freshman Jason Silberman agreed it would not be financially beneficial to switch to a different bank.

“The fees that you would have to pay with a different card trying to withdraw money from an ATM would probably even out with the $5 fee for using it,” he said.

Freshman Nathaniel Simon was skeptical of the motives behind Bank of America’s retraction of the fees. Prior to Bank of America’s announcement, Wells Fargo and Chase announced plans to retract their similar $3 fees due to the large consumer backlash, which was preceded Bank of America’s announcement.

Unlike Bank of America, both Wells Fargo and Chase had already put a pilot program in place to test the efficacy of the monthly fee.

“The fact that they all had these plans at the same time made me curious about whether they were trying to appease the people by saying that they were going to do this and then not doing it,” Simon said. “I am a little bit skeptical about how great it is in the grand scheme of things.”

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