Blame Congress

I do some of my Banking with Bank of America, in part becuase I have been with them since the beginning of geologic time, and because they were conveniently located to where I lived and worked. That changed over ten years ago and it is now a twenty minute drive for me to get to the only B of A on my part of the Oregon coast, but I have continued to stay with them becasue my banking evolved along with the internet to include all of the bank services I could possibly need right at my laptop computer. The only reason I ever go to a real bricks and mortor location is to deposit a check.

At the end of last week B of A, along with many other big banks, announced that they intended to begin charging $5 per month for the use of our ever popular Debit Card. This move is the result of Congress being pressured to limit the fees banks can charge merchants on debit card transactions to something like 24 cents, whereas before legislative scrutiny they had been charging up to 40 cents. All is good - sock it to business to figure out how to cope. Thus the new fee on consumers. Thank you Congress, you messed this one up nicely.

Well, now that I am almost thoroughly enmeshed in the online banking system, this last friday, shortly after the fee announcement, the B of A online banking system virtually tanks, slows to a crawl, or is inaccesable. I am deeply suspicious that the two events are linked and that someone or some group is thinking that they are making B of A pay for their shoddy treatment of thier customers by fussing with the banks internet banking system. If this is true, then "they" have mostly negatively affected people like me who need to do things like pay bills and transfer money. Oops.

So I am now resorting to sending e-n-v-e-l-o-p-e-s in the mail to my utility companies. I am thinking that I will join the revolution that Congress has started and just sending in the payment stub to the utility, no check, and a copy of the message that appears when I attempt to access my money in the way that the bank prefers:

Bank of America
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