I noticed a nice $3.95 fee on my statement this past month and, in the way of bank statements, it was totally impossible to determine what I was getting charged for!  I sent them a note about it asking why I was charged and got this response:

Dear Mr. Knight:

Thank you for contacting <bank name> E-Mail Support to inquire about pricing for our online banking service.

<bank name> charges no fee for access to your account information in <bank name> OnLine, our Internet-based online banking product, or for unlimited use of our online bill payment feature.

However, a monthly fee of $3.95 will apply to access your account balances and transactions in Quicken or Microsoft Money.

Our records indicate you are using Quicken with Bill Pay.

If E-Mail Support can be of additional assistance to you, feel free to e-mail us again through <bank name> OnLine.

Thank you for using <bank name> OnLine.  We appreciate your business!

<employee name>

<bank name> E-Mail Support

Now for some reason they have decided that everyone who tracks their money and attempts to be fiscally responsible needs to be charged a fee!  I guess these customers are less likely to overdraft?  I really liked the list of things they don’t charge me for as a justification for what they do want to charge me for.  Here’s my response…

Thanks for your reply, but I’m afraid that your information is incorrect.  I do not own a Quicken product (except their Will Maker) and while I own MS Money, I have not used it in months.  I do have a program that downloads my information so that I can track my spending and savings.  Since I am not accessing my “account balances and transactions in Quicken or Microsoft Money.” please refund the fee and provide instructions on what led you to believe that I was using quicken so that I can remedy the problem.  Is it a particular file type that I am downloading?

I have been a very happy and loyal <bank name> customer, but this fee leaves a sour taste in my mouth.  I know a little bit about the costs of running servers and this seems to me to be a huge fee for the service you are providing.  This fee also only hits your users who are most interested in managing their money, that would seem like a demographic you wouldn’t want to send looking for a different financial institution.  Is there a better forum to send a complaint letter about the existence of such a fee?

Thanks for looking into all of this,

  -David

I’ve got a support note into Wesabe (that’s gotta be what triggered the fee) to see if there’s something I (or they) can do with the uploader to make sure I don’t get pinged with this again.  blah!

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 11:30 pm and is filed under personal finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.