The bank is sending out a letter to all our customers about changes to our checking accounts.
“In an effort to keep your costs low” [emphasis mine] the letter reads, the bank is changing the fee schedule for all our checking and savings accounts. All accounts are increasing fees by between $1 and $5 per month. Most of those accounts have a minimum balance required to avoid fees, but many of our customers can’t afford to keep a minimum balance in their accounts.
Another thing is they’re getting rid of all the benefits that come with our branded accounts. Things like accidental death insurance, identity theft insurance, trip routing, rebate offers, etc. That doesn’t seem like such a big deal, though, since hardly anybody ever used them. They were never a selling point when someone chose a checking account.
“We’re confident that this update will allow us to keep our fees low and provide products more in keeping with your busy lifestyle.” I think this is their way of saying they want everyone to use online baking and e-statements, since they’re going to start charging for paper statements. A lot of our older customers aren’t online. They’re going to be really pissed off.
Management is supposed to inform us when to start opening the new account types and ONLY the new account types, sometime between now and the beginning of December. But what are we supposed to tell customers in the meantime? There’s no guidance for that. Customers are going to be angry if they open an account in November expecting a certain fee schedule and in December it goes up $1-5! At our local branch, at least, we’re going warn new customers that the account terms are going to change soon. I suspect it will affect whether a customer opens an account and which they choose.
These changes will likely lose us customers. The branch manager and the former branch manager have been worried about the credit union building a nice new building only a few blocks away from us (it’s a small town), but this is going to drive more customers to them than the shiny new building will.
“In an effort to keep your costs low” [emphasis mine] the letter reads, the bank is changing the fee schedule for all our checking and savings accounts. All accounts are increasing fees by between $1 and $5 per month. Most of those accounts have a minimum balance required to avoid fees, but many of our customers can’t afford to keep a minimum balance in their accounts.
Another thing is they’re getting rid of all the benefits that come with our branded accounts. Things like accidental death insurance, identity theft insurance, trip routing, rebate offers, etc. That doesn’t seem like such a big deal, though, since hardly anybody ever used them. They were never a selling point when someone chose a checking account.
“We’re confident that this update will allow us to keep our fees low and provide products more in keeping with your busy lifestyle.” I think this is their way of saying they want everyone to use online baking and e-statements, since they’re going to start charging for paper statements. A lot of our older customers aren’t online. They’re going to be really pissed off.
Management is supposed to inform us when to start opening the new account types and ONLY the new account types, sometime between now and the beginning of December. But what are we supposed to tell customers in the meantime? There’s no guidance for that. Customers are going to be angry if they open an account in November expecting a certain fee schedule and in December it goes up $1-5! At our local branch, at least, we’re going warn new customers that the account terms are going to change soon. I suspect it will affect whether a customer opens an account and which they choose.
These changes will likely lose us customers. The branch manager and the former branch manager have been worried about the credit union building a nice new building only a few blocks away from us (it’s a small town), but this is going to drive more customers to them than the shiny new building will.
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