I really appreciate your blog and your guts in putting Bank of America in your Bettina’s Hall of Shame.

I have something to contribute, which is true of many banks.  You talked about overdrafts. What I see now is banks claiming to address and reduce their overdraft charges and its a joke what they are proposing.  I feel insulted!  What they need to address is the 5 business days during which they keep your deposits ‘on ice’.  That is what is causing all of the overdrafts.  Your blog is the first place I’ve read which accurately puts the blame where it belongs.  In many cases the banks don’t even tell you they put your funds on hold for five days.  I opened an account with Bank of America just recently and they held my first deposit for five days.  I couldn’t believe when I went to draw cash out from an ATM machine I couldn’t get five cents.  I was in a very bad situation because I had put all of my money into Bank of America and the person who opened the account said nothing to me about my not being able to access my money for five business days.

The federal reserve needs to address why it continues to give banks that huge loop hole in which they can make billions.  Banks do receive funds, even from out of state checks in much less than five days.  They are making lots of money through that loop hole.  Add that to what else they are doing with credit cards and you have an obscenity!

What are they doing? Taking money from the middle and lower middle class and yes, in many cases the upper middle class and giving it to the super rich – sometimes through the huge bonuses they pay out.  Where do you think the money comes from to pay those bonuses? From those overdraft fees, those credit card overlimit fees, those credit card interest charges at 30% from people with good credit, and on and on.

I want to add what is happening with credit cards.  Banks lowered many, many peoples credit card limits.  They claimed it was because of their bad credit and late payments.  That is a lie.  I know lots of people who had their credit card limits lowered and their debt level was lower when it was lowered than it was a year ago.  Their credit was good – they still had jobs and they had no late payments.

Why are banks lowering credit limits?  So they can collect overlimit fees.  If your credit limit is lowered – especially if you are not aware of that lowered amount – you charge over your new limit, but within your old limit and you have an overlimit fee.  Or even if you don’t have anymore charges on your card you still get an overlimit fee because of the time of the month they lower it on your account and the credit card finance charges which get posted to your credit card balance throwing your account over its new limit.  Your credit card limit is generally lowered to within an amount which will cause an overlimit amount when the finance charges are added.  In some cases I know of the credit card limit is lowered to beneath your current amount due and while you don’t get a fee at the time it is lowered to under your balance, you do get an overlimit fee shortly thereafter because of the addition of the finance charges and you keep getting overlimit fees unless you can come up with the money to pay the difference between your credit card new limit and your old balance.  They talk about contracts?  They throw stuff into new contracts on practically a daily basis and they don’t honor contracts that they have with their customers.  They reserve the right to change the contract at any time for any reason and everything you did under the old contract is now being held under your nose in a new contract.  I’ve never seen anything like this before.  It is horrible and ordainary people are living under these circumstances trying to raise children, put food on the table, pay their bills and more.  This is a democratic country?  It seems to be this is a country where theft is happening legitimately by banks and other financial institutions.  The money banks are obtaining fraudulently from the American public makes Madoffs fraud look like pennies.

It is a total disgrace the way the banks are and are being allowed to rip off people.  Yours is the first voice I’ve heard which has put it so eloquently.  I hope you are heard.  I doubt that you will be because most of the media depends upon advertising and other monies from banks so they aren’t ready to do a real indept article on all of this.

I would have thought Americans would be demonstrating in the streets against banks the way they are so shamelessly ripping off their own customers.  You said Bank of America is cannibalizing its own customers.  You didn’t go far enough.  you should have said the entire banking industry – with very few exceptions – are cannibalizing their own customers. Something really drastic needs to be done about this.  The small things being done today are insulting!  The people addressing the issue must be getting money under the table from the banks because they are just letting air out of the anger of the public against the banks.