Dormant Account Fee?? Are they kidding? No they are not.

[Etraker]

My wife has a savings account with our credit union that she opened when she bought a car several years ago. She put $25 in the account. She had never added anything to the account or taken anything out. She earned $1.36 in interest over a six year period. A couple of days ago she gets her statement on the account and they have charged her a $5 fee for a dormant account. So she lost her interest and $3.64. How is the money sitting in her account costing them anything that the would need to charge a fee for? I thought that when you had money in a bank that they were making money, so how and why would they charge you for leaving your money in their bank?

[JVS]

1. If you think that's bad, the PA government tried to take $230 bucks that I had sitting in an account

I got a letter this month telling me that if I didn't want the government to take the money I would have to confirm that I still want the account or close the account.

[DollarBillHines]

2. One of our non-profits get charged a fee if the ATM card is not used in a month.

And we cannot transact business in the lobby, either.

BofA, of course.

[Poll_Blind]

3. This is actually a pretty common form of legal theft.

I needed to get something notarized which was not near my work so I popped into a Washington Mutual to ask if they'd do it for me. They said they only do it for customers. I asked them how much I'd have to deposit to become a customer. They said $125 or something like that. So I deposited the $125, got the thing notarized. Let the account just chill with the $125, never paid much attention to the statement letters.

One day, opened the statement letter on a whim and noticed that they'd been dinging my account the whole time for inactivity and so my $125 was reduced to like $10.00. Then when they went under I eventually got a notice from (somebody) saying here's my $10 bucks or whatever, if I wanted it.

Edit: This happened like....6 years ago or something.

PB

[Etraker]

4. Jesus

She just checked the rules with her other bank and they have a $15 dollar fee quarterly if you fail to maintain less than an average balance of $500. How does a low income person trying to save money derive any benefit by putting money in a savings account. The interest rate she is earning on that account is .05%

[Ruby the Liberal]

6. Most banks will waive fees if you do a direct deposit into an account

without the minimum balance issue. Tell her to ask about that. A good bank will look at her usage and put her into an account package that maximizes the benefit and minimizes (or eliminates) the fees. The big banks don't give a shit - so ask the questions.

[Fumesucker]

7. You need to read Nickeled and Dimed

http://www.amazon.com/Nickel-Dimed-Not-Getting-America/dp/0312626681

You're only seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of how the poor get screwed in the land of the free.

Essayist and cultural critic Barbara Ehrenreich has always specialized in turning received wisdom on its head with intelligence, clarity, and verve. With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, she decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is considered a living wage. So she did what millions of Americans do, she looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make ends meet.
As a waitress in Florida, where her name is suddenly transposed to "girl," trailer trash becomes a demographic category to aspire to with rent at $675 per month. In Maine, where she ends up working as both a cleaning woman and a nursing home assistant, she must first fill out endless pre-employment tests with trick questions such as "Some people work better when they're a little bit high." In Minnesota, she works at Wal-Mart under the repressive surveillance of men and women whose job it is to monitor her behavior for signs of sloth, theft, drug abuse, or worse. She even gets to experience the humiliation of the urine test.

So, do the poor have survival strategies unknown to the middle class? And did Ehrenreich feel the "bracing psychological effects of getting out of the house, as promised by the wonks who brought us welfare reform?" Nah. Even in her best-case scenario, with all the advantages of education, health, a car, and money for first month's rent, she has to work two jobs, seven days a week, and still almost winds up in a shelter. As Ehrenreich points out with her potent combination of humor and outrage, the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket, but wages never rise. Rather, jobs are so cheap as measured by the pay that workers are encouraged to take as many as they can. Behind those trademark Wal-Mart vests, it turns out, are the borderline homeless. With her characteristic wry wit and her unabashedly liberal bent, Ehrenreich brings the invisible poor out of hiding and, in the process, the world they inhabit--where civil liberties are often ignored and hard work fails to live up to its reputation as the ticket out of poverty. --Lesley Reed --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

[Ruby the Liberal]

5. That is actually quite common.

Best to close accounts you do not use and consolidate all liquid (savings/checking) with one bank or Credit Union. They will give you package deals for doing that, and you don't have to worry about dormant account fees for having accounts strewn hither and to.

Oh, and BTW - if you don't go in and close this one, in time, they will have to turn the money in the account over to the government. 'Tis the law. No idea why, or what started that, it just is.

[Shrike47]

8. Dain Rauscher charges you an annual fee on the stocks they're holding for you for not trading.

My retirement account kept getting smaller while they charged for doing nothing with the bad investments they advised me to make.