What are the odds that this time next year we’ll be reading an article with a headline that goes something like this: “Free Checking Didn’t Disappear After All.”
This came to mind after reading an article about overdraft protection that was passed to me by a colleague this morning. Appearing in the money blogs section of times.com on March 7, “What Ever Happened to Overdraft Outrage?” was written by Brad Tuttle.
Tuttle reminds us that all the outrage over high overdraft fees and the predicted loss of billions of dollars in fee revenue from the mandated opt-in program turned out to be “much ado about nothing” or merely “a tempest in a teapot.”
You see, after all the dust kicked-up by the big banks and their handmaidens in the media was swept away, turns out that a majority of checking customers prefer onerous overdraft fees to being turned-down and embarrassed at the point of sale.
In fact, according to Moebs Services’ numbers quoted by Tuttle, at least 75% of checking customers contacted about opting-in actually said “yes.” And here’s a shocker for those do-gooders in Washington, Moebs tells us that 98% of the heavy users of overdraft protection opted-in. These are the folks who pay more than 10 overdraft fees a year.
Read more: ACTON Marketing