There was a complaint on another blog today about being charged what I consider to be a monthly "convenience fee" by a major national bank to access your cash through an atm from his local bank and that he will be going tomorrow to close his accounts, then open new ones at a local credit union.
I had a different but more sobering situation with another major national bank that grew over time to be one of the US's biggest banks through acquisition and finally it went belly up and bought by another major east coast banking concern.
Over the past year, it has been cutting a lot of services back. And it started asking for a minimum monthly cash flow by direct deposit or minimum $1500 deposit to get the free checking services. Along with that they also are looking to implement the same $3 to $5 monthly convenience fee that some other banks have all ready insituted.
All I can say is that the credit unions will have a field day with this now that they DO loan to small to medium sized businesses and will get more members from the continuing to push away unprofitable or low producing clients to smaller banks, high volume financial institutions or credit unions that want this business.
Then cherry pick the big and medium sized business that operate in cash flows of $10 million or more but below a threshold that it would make sense to have their own internal banking, bonding or economic staff that would handle all of these transactions internally or through a secondary, outsource company to take care of this for the company or corporate systems.
I did follow this other blogger, opened two separate banking relationships in Vancouver and working on improving my credit rating, saving and hoping that I might be able to operate my own business or own my own home. And really, I do believe that the bigger banks are just simply trying to unload what they deem as unprofitable customers...
And I want to privately thank the credit unions and local banks that are resisting this idea that your customer is the person that you just dump fees for every convenience but still charge fairly for the real services that deserve to be charged for.
