CNN

October 8th, 2011

Meet the 22-Year-Old Who Launched a Backlash Against BofA Fees

When Bank of America started charging 22-year-old Molly Kathpole a five dollar a month fee, she decided she wasn’t willing to pay. She started a petition drive that–as of tonight–has attracted over 200,000 signatures. “I don’t have an extra 60 dollars a year to give Bank of America” Kathpole told Erin Burnett on OutFront Friday.

Bank of America declined to appear on OutFront, but did provide this statement:

Over the last two years, we have been more committed than ever before to being clear and transparent with our customers to help ensure they know exactly what they are getting and how much it costs. That’s why we were an industry leader in ending debit card overdraft fees. Customers felt that they were losing control over their own funds by the way those fees were charged. We agreed. So we stopped – before anyone in the industry, before the government took action.

Everything we try to do with our customers is to be clear and to give them a choice in how they handle their everyday banking needs. That’s what the recent debit card decision is as well. This new fee allows us to continue to offer the service and convenience customers have come to expect from Bank of America – fraud protection ($0 Liability), overdraft prevention, record-keeping, fraud monitoring, and savings programs (Keep the Change and Add-It-Up). Customers who value debit’s features and convenience can choose to use their debit cards by paying the fee. Customers who don’t want to pay this fee can continue to access their checking accounts to get cash from ATMs, through online bill pay, and increasingly through their mobile phones and with P2P transfers.

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