Bank of America announced on Tuesday that they would abandon a plan to charge customers a $5 fee to use their debit cards.
“We have listened to our customers very closely over the last few weeks and recognize their concern with our proposed debit usage fee,” said David Darnell, co-chief operating officer in a press release. “Our customers’ voices are most important to us. As a result, we are not currently charging the fee and will not be moving forward with any additional plans to do so.”
Ben Levin, a senior political science major, said he was glad that the company canceled the plan.
“Ethically, the plan was discrimination on people with less money,” Levin said. “It didn’t make sense when I heard the news. The bank cares for people who have more.”
On Sep. 30, Bank of America shocked its customers by announcing that they would charge many debit card users a $5 monthly fee.
The company’s stock price fell and even President Obama criticized the move.
The way to avoid the fee was to keep a monthly balance minimum of $20,000, have a mortgage from Bank of America or brokerage accounts with Merrill Lynch.
After the announcement of the fees, one outraged customer, 22-year-old Molly Katchpole in Washington, D.C., started a petition on change.org that raised 300,000 petitioners in approximately one month.
“They should’ve responded more to the people with less money,” Levin said. “Or, if the bank charged the fees for everyone, I think people would have been less mad.”
Young Cho, a junior marketing major, said the bank has made a huge mistake that alienated its customers.
“They did not care about their customers,” Cho said. “I was one of the mad customers, I was even thinking of canceling the account.”
Other banks like JPMorgan ended testing a fee of $15 for basic checking accounts and $3 for debit cards and Wells Fargo and several others also scrapped the fee plans.
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