Survey: 610,000 switched banks to protest debit card fees

[cory777]

LA Times

About 610,000 U.S. bank customers switched to a smaller institution in the last three months of 2011 to protest plans by major banks to impose monthly charges for using debit cards, according to a financial services market-research firm.

That represented 11% of the 5.6 million U.S. people who switched banks during that period -- a relatively modest number, Javelin Strategy & Research said in a report Monday.

Javelin said it analyzed the online responses of 5,878 people to gauge the effect of the backlash triggered by Bank of America Corp.'s plan to charge $5 a month to customers who used their debit cards for purchases.

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Protesters from the Occupy movement, consumer advocates and even President Obama questioned the move, and an online movement called Bank Transfer Day emerged to encourage people to switch to small banks and credit unions.

Full Article Here - http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-bank-transfer-day-20120206,0,2542167.story

Your Activist News - http://activistnews.blogspot.com/

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[Sherman A1]

1. Interesting

The article seems to downplay the number switching as small, yet in this economy I would think that no business would be encouraged to see the loss of over 600K customers. No matter the size of that business.

It was a dumb marketing move by BOA and after seeing what happened to Netflix (and now the Komen thing) one wonders why businesses are so tone deaf? They learned nothing from the Arab Spring.

[FarCenter]

4. They could be OK

Their non-performing mortgages, real estate owned and mortgage lending losses appear to be dropping.

[xfundy]

3. Biz leaders often start to believe their own PR.

Take a look at IBM, Sears, Kodak--all thought because the were behemoths, they could do no wrong. They didn't keep up with the reality that was happening in the real world and the rest is history.

Repigs are hopefully in the middle of the same process. Good.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

5. About 10 years ago, people looked at me like I was crazy,

when I vocally expressed my disgust with BOA after being told it would cost me $5 to cash a check there. I'd had it with being fingerprinted, forced to show a major credit card in addition to my drivers license as punishment for not having an account there; and this was the last straw for me. The teller told me that if I wanted to open an account right then, I could cash the check with no fee. I replied that I didn't want to write checks for people that they couldn't cash without having a fine imposed upon them. People thought I must be nuts.

[phantom power]

6. According to same article an additional 26% switched because of fees...

just "not to protest per se"

And I wonder how many other people switched, period, but just didn't happen to say "I'm switching because of fees"

[titaniumsalute]

7. This survey is stupid

The most important question they should have asked is "What average account balance do you have?" $0-$1,000; $1,000 - $3,000; $3,000 - $5,000; $5,000-$10,000; $10,000+.

Then you could quantify the amount the bank lost in that 610,000 people who switched accounts. If the avarage account was a $2,000 balance you're talking about $1.22 billion dollars lost.

[kenfrequed]

8. Interesting

This is one of the things that the OWS movement worked to communicate as a direct action against the major banks. It was one of their many successes and I think there should be an annual 'running from the banks' event.

[Islandlife]

9. That's how the free market is supposed to work. Very natural.

[sarcasmo]

10. We put everything into accounts with the Credit Union.

I tell people, if I can't borrow from the Credit Union, I don't borrow. Edited to say, everything isn't much.

[Myrina]

11. Maybe not so many 'people', but what kind of DOLLARS does that equal?

610,000 people, x $5 fee-per-month = $3.5M lost 'revenue' on that alone. Now add in all the account service fees, interest on loans perhaps or NSF fees people tend to incur, stretch that out over a couple years ... and this moderate initiative put some whoopass on BOFA.

[Posteritatis]

12. You're off by an order of magnitude there; it'd be $36.6M/yr on that alone

The rest would be correspondingly huger too, of course. The total hit would almost definitely be in the nine-digit range, in any case. Ouch.

[Myrina]

13. Ok, so math isn't my strong suit. But you get my point.

Have a nice day.