[fredkbloggs]

Couldn't wait until the next day to make the purchase? Couldn't use cash or a credit card instead?

You're an adult. You're obviously literate or you couldn't be posting here. Unless these fees were not disclosed to you (a MAJOR breach of the law if true), you had every opportunity to know that this would occur and to prevent it. Try taking responsibility for your own actions.

[mbrameld]

You can't imagine a scenario where a responsible adult has had a checking account with a balance over $5000 for many years and has never run in to the charge for dropping below that level, eventually forgetting about that $5 fee? Now if you managed to picture that and believe it's possible for a responsible adult to forget about an obscure fee his bank has never charged him before, try to imagine your home's AC goes out in the middle of August when it's 100 degrees out. Now you're stressed out but you've got enough money in checking to cover the replacement that day, so you call somebody out to replace it and schedule a transfer from savings the same day. Can you maybe see just a little how a mistake like that could happen to a responsible adult? Do you have every possible fee your bank charges committed to memory?

And finally, are you trying to add anything to this discussion or just displaying your self-righteousness?

[kefka]

Ah, so if every bank gives a 1000 page boilerplate "contract", and they all entail usurious fees, it's just the person's problem because they should have known?

Well, fuck that logic. All the banks are acting in a cartel with these. And banking is effectively required. Many workplaces require direct deposit, which guess what..... require a bank account.

Banking should be boring, simple, and hassle free. Contracts should be simple and readable, and not filled with dense legalese and caveats that say "tl;dr: we can change anything we like whenever we like. oh and we post it underneath a rock".

[fredkbloggs]

> Ah, so if every bank gives a 1000 page boilerplate "contract", and they all entail usurious fees, it's just the person's problem because they should have known?

Yes. If someone hands me a 1000-page contract and asks me to sign it, I'm walking out the door. As any sane person would.

> All the banks are acting in a cartel with these.

Well, (a) numerous posters (who otherwise agree with you) seem to disagree on this point and have offered both specific and general recommendations for banks that perhaps are not. And (b), if that's true, you should open your own bank. If you can't, then you should go look into why you can't, because the barriers to entry in this space are 100% artificial; that is, they are creations of the government. Not the market.

> Banking should be boring, simple, and hassle free. Contracts should be simple and readable, and not filled with dense legalese and caveats that say "tl;dr: we can change anything we like whenever we like. oh and we post it underneath a rock".

I agree 100%. I look forward to opening an account at your bank.

[outworlder]

And, as part of his adult responsibilities, he's obviously responsible for watching his bank account balance like a hawk. It's not like adults have to do anything else.

Also, you're assuming the "purchase" was something superfluous that could wait.