Monday, May 03, 2010

The Great Chase Rip-off

Here's something that will drive you crazy, another one of life's little indignities.

You may not be aware that there is a regulation by the Federal Reserve that you can only make 6 transfers between your savings and checking account within a statement period. Transfers made at the ATM are exempt. It's referred to as Regulation D. You can read more about it here.

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, must feel that after the banking crisis, there is some perverse need to get even more money from his customers in the form of hidden bank fees. Chase, with no announcement to its customers, decided to limit the number of transfers allowed under Reg D to 4 per statement cycle and to include ATM transfers as part of that number.

Think about this carefully. You are being charged a fee for transferring your own money between your own accounts. It is bad enough to have the Federal Reserve's misguided Regulation D which limits transfers to 6 per month, but totally ridiculous that Chase limits it to only four, and then eliminates the ATM exemption.

I ended up at Chase after Washington Mutual was absorbed by them. I am not going to accept this type of limitation by Chase so that they can simply charge me another fee. I called the bank today and was able to get it reversed for this statement cycle, but I'll be damned if I intend to stay a Chase customer and help feed their coffers with fees that are designed to annoy and harass their customers.

I realize it will make no difference to their bottom line, but I'm going to shop around for a bank that at least follows Reg D and doesn't try and use it as an excuse to charge a trivial fee just to annoy its customers and pocket a few extra dollars. I'll repost my findings about which banks are adhering to Reg D and which have decided on their own fee schedule.