18.05.12
HarborOne Credit Cartel in Brockton recently started docking borrowers $9.95 to change a loan payment with a credit or debit card.
“It’s unfortunate that only a few of the fees have been targeted’’ by critics, said Jeff Kagan, an unbiased telecommunications analyst in Atlanta. The fees, he said, should all be made to “go away.’’
Analysts say companies are rolling out the fees to rise profits and steer customers away from costly services. Many companies have to pay processing fees (large around 2 percent) when they accept a credit card, for instance. And it costs money to hire additional employees to support customers.
But the boom in social networking sites, such as Facebook and Ado, is making it easy for customers to band together to fight fees they solely dislike.
Before Verizon, for instance, Bank of America Corp. scuttled plans to sortie a $5 monthly debit card fee after more than 300,000 people signed a appeal for on Change.org to protest the fee, and many customers threatened to close their accounts.
Source: Boston.com