Bank of America to Charge Monthly Debit Fee

customers will need to set aside some extra cash for new monthly debit card fees.

Starting early next year, the large national bank will charge customers who use their debit cards for purchases a fee of $5 each month. The fee coincides with other U.S. banks attempting to generate money following regulations on charges since the financial crisis. 

"The economics of offering a debit card have changed," Bank of America spokeswoman Anne Pace said in a Thursday Reuters article.

But others weren't buying the monthly fee as fair to customers.

"Bank of America is trying to find new ways to pad their profits by sticking it to its customers," according to Sen. Richard Durbin, architect of debit card interchange fee reform, in a prepared statement in the Reuters report. "It's overt, unfair, and I hope their customers have the final say."

Here's what some current and former Bank of America customers had to say about the change on the Macomb Patch Facebook:

• "That is why I took all my money out of Bank of America! Constant fees on MY money," wrote Maria Miller Myers.
• "I don't have a debit card, so I guess it doesn't affect me. However, if and when they charge me for something stupid, I won't complain, I'll just leave their bank. I won't be charged for using my own money....that's just crazy talk. Bank of America is not doing well, so this is one of their ideas they come up with to solve their problems? Making us pay for it. NO," wrote Sandy Teggart Brachel.
• "In all my years in and out of the banking industry I've never heard ONE good word about BoA, not even when we were all blindly in love with our mortgage bankers, even then they were rip off artists. I seriously don't know how they do it, even after a bailout," wrote Carol Kinney.

Bank of America has branches at 18200 23 Mile Road and 45194 Romeo Plank as well as in Macomb Township.