Customers urged to learn about new bank charges

Banks are now fighting for projected amount in lost revenues as legislators introduced new bank laws. In the past, the banks charge their customers for late payments, increase the interest rates as a consequence, and impose too much overdraft fees. This time however, as the legislators made moves to address the concerns, the new rules can be a source of the banks’ insecurities. The rules are aimed at putting a cap at the amount that banks or financial institutions can impose to their customers—and the dealers or traders—for purchases made or the transactions.

The banks, for their part, have new fees by which to charge to their customers. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and other leaders of the industry are now devising new ways of collecting fees from their customers from requiring credit holders to maintain a minimum amount of balance in their checking accounts to offering services for a price such as banks warning on pending and possible fraud, credit and debit monitoring and updates, etc…

The banks are of course expected to fully disclose these new charges for their customers’ information. As in the past, there had been problems with banks shocking customers all too much because of overdraft protection charges reaching amounts that take off credit and interest rates that compound by the number of transactions.

San Francisco Consumers Union Senior Attorney Gail Hillebrand advised that those who own checking accounts should be more careful now that new bank rules are in place. He says that similar to what happened in the past, banks construe information disclosure in the forms of formal letters sent to customers who are not even encouraged to acknowledge the receipt of such documents. Should customers receive these formal letters containing the charges, they think of such as unimportant as there are no substantial explanations of where the charges go to or what the charges are for in the first place. The result then is that the letters find their way to the trash bin.

Hillebrand says that customers are very dependent on their billing statement every month. He adds that it is only through the monthly statements that customers get to see their new charges. For this, Hillebrand stresses the importance of reading all of the documents that banks send. Should there be lack in information, he advises checking account holders to directly call the attention of their respective banks.