After decades of insults, American customers can't believe they're being made to save companies that treat them like crap.
Ted Rall -- uExpress.com
March 26, 2009 -- NEW YORK -- "Populist anger in America is the anger of dispossession," writes Newsweek's Rick Perlstein. "The delinking of effort and reward has become all too manifest. That always makes Americans angry. We do not like to reward those who do not produce."
That's not it. This is about abused customers. After decades of insults, they can't believe they're being made to save companies that treat them like crap.
I'm a calm person. Yet my most recent bank statement featured three items that brought my blood to a fast boil. One was a $10 "income wire transfer fee." A newspaper that publishes this column paid for it by wiring the money to my account. The bank charged me ten bucks--for depositing money! Money that, by the way, they invest in what the banking industry calls "the overnight call float."
The same statement included a $3 fee for using an ATM that belongs to a different bank. Compared to my bank, loan sharks are sweethearts. If I take out $20 every day and pay three dollars each time, that's 15 percent interest a day -- or 5,475 percent a year. Did I mention that the fee was a mistake? I never use ATMs at other banks. To straighten out this $3 fee, I'll have to waste my time explaining myself to someone at a call center in India, typing my account number into a keypad so I can repeat it by voice after waiting on hold.
Then there's what my bank calls AN IMPORTANT CHANGE CONCERNING THE PROCESSING OF YOUR CHECKS EFFECTIVE MARCH 20, 2009: "As checks you have written are presented to us for payment during the course of a business day," they explain, "we will place a hold on available funds in your account of those checks, resulting in a reduction in your available account balance throughout that day." This is Bankese for: "You will pay bounce fees even when you have enough money in your account for checks to clear."
Read The Entire Story