Bank of America Drops $5 Debit Card Fee, Listens to Angry Protesters

Bank of America announced Tuesday that it will drop its plan to start charging its customers $5 a month to use their debit cards. After they had announced the plan in September, they received so much backlash that they are nixing the plan, which would have been implemented in January of 2012. This comes as a huge relief to angry customers, especially those who were on the fence about switching banks because of this annoying fee. Now they can avoid the hassle. Bank of America must have been a little panicked when rival banks announced that they would not charge similar debit card fees. A poll showed that 62 percent of customers would happily switch banks if they were to be charged a debit card fee.

Bank of America realized that the potential of losing so many customers would not outweigh the money they might have made from the imposed fee. David Darnell, co-chief operating officer of Bank of America, said: "We have listened to our customers very closely over the last few weeks and recognize their concern with our proposed debit usage fee. 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 plan to do so."

Wow. Bank of America's surrender is significant on a larger scale, because it implies that big corporations actually listen to what people want--when they really join together and speak up. This is heartening news for the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, says that this "shows that when the public fights back together against Wall Street, we can make progress--but the fight is nowhere close to [being] over."

Photo courtesy of AccountClient.com.

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