With the banking crisis and the recession looming large, the past year has brought a halt to many of the banks most egregious practices. Excessive fees for overdraft protection (paying $35.00 more for a $5.00 mistake) and the way that lenders could raise interest rates in what seemed to be an arbitrary manner have been curtailed. The nastiest of the nasty fees are mostly a thing of the past.
But the problem is that the credit card companies are losing the profits that they had become accustomed to. And as we can all plainly see, corporations do not take kindly to a cut in their profits. Profits are the reason for their existence.
So as can be expected the banks will not give in without a fight.
So you can start expecting such fees as maintenance fees on checking accounts, free checking will become rare.
And look for new charges for services like fraud alerts and debit cards.
There will be new fees and the banks are also required to disclose any new fees.
So as we have mentioned many times before, you need to read your mail. The disclosures will likely arrive in correspondence that appears to be junk, ordinary looking mail that you may have discarded in the past.
Now you need to read it, all of it, even if it looks like junk.
Because, now it probably isn?t junk.
