Bank Of America Cancels Planned Fee
MIAMI (CBSMiami) - While protesters marched outside Downtown Miami's Bank of America building Tuesday in objection to the banks planned debit card fee, Bank of America announced it would cancel the fee.
Bank of America's planned cardholder fee would have charged debit users $5 monthly using their cards for purchases.
On Tuesday, however, after a backlash of complaints, Bank of America canceled the planned fee.
"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 statement. "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."
The charges were planned to help the bank recover revenue after recent legislation capped merchant fees Bank of America could charge businesses for processing their cards
The protest, which included community groups along with members of Occupy Miami and 1MiamiNow, was meant to bring attention to efforts being made to reclaim the U.S. economy from corporations and big banks.
"BoA (Bank of America) received $199 billion dollars in a taxpayer-funded bailout. Now they are going to be charging customers a $5 monthly fee just to use their BoA cards. Beyond that, BoA has become the poster child of Big Banks not doing their part to help with the hundreds of thousands of mortgages that are now either underwater or in foreclosure," according to release sent out before the protest.
"We in the 99% are tired of how corporations and big banks treat us. It is time for foreclosures to stop, and for economic equality in our society," said Ricardo Dormevil in a written statement.
On Monday, Regions Bank and SunTrust Bank announced that they were discontinuing the unpopular debit card fee and would issue refunds to their customers. Wells Fargo said it scrapped their plan to test the fee and last week JP Morgan Chase said it was dropping the idea of adding the fee after testing poorly in Wisconsin.
