Not so long ago, back in the 1990's, banks charged a regular monthly service charge for its customers to have a checking account.  That fee could have been tied to a minimum balance and usually ranged from $15 to $25 each month.  As a result, the financial services industry made a great deal of money off of its customers.  As time moved on, banks developed other products and services related to checking accounts that could make them even more money than service charges, Other Fee Income.  These products and services included overdraft protection services and interchange fee income from debit card usage.  They figured that if they offered free checking to everyone, that they could open more checking accounts and offer these customers the other products and services that were bigger money makers.  They created rewards programs that offered prizes if you used your debit card more.  The more you used it, the more interchange fee income the banks would make.  Times were very, very good to the banking industry. 

Then, Congress passed legislation that was intended to reform the industry and protect the consumer and the retail business owners.  Although Congress may have had good intentions in reforming the industry, what it has done is bring back the dreaded checking account monthly service charge.  These actions by Congress have caused the banking industry to lose a significant amount of Other Fee Income and spend countless dollars trying to conform to the new regulations.  Now, I am not trying to defend the actions of the banking giants, but sometimes the best intentions of the government ends up costing the average consumer more than if they had not done anything to protect us in the first place. 

That all being said, a recent survey was conducted to see if customers of these banks were advised that their bank was going to charge a checking fee, or some other type of fee, would they be inclined to move their relationship to someone who may not charge a fee.  We have all gotten used to our free checking accounts and we feel that we should be entitled to our free accounts.  Below are the responses of these consumers to these questions.