Sucking you dry.....

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm really starting to get weary of all the excessive fees being charged by everyone from airlines to hotels and restaurants. Want to bring more than one change of clothing with you on vacation? OK, sure. That'll be $25 per checked bag, please. Need a hotel room and want to book online? Sure thing. That'll just be $10 process fee for online services, please. But these aren't the only businesses robbing us blind.

Today, I logged onto my bank's website with the intention of doing a little online banking to pay those pesky bills that have been piling up. Instead of getting my usual log-in page, I get a disclaimer, asking me to click yes to agree to be charged $6.95 a month to be able to use bill pay. Now, I've been using the service for a year, and it's always been free. Now, all of a sudden, without notice or warning of any kind, they want nearly $7 for the privilege of paying bills online. I don't think so. Our bank charges us everything from monthly account fees for not having their insane minimum balance of $5,000 in our account, to $30 a piece a year for the privilege of having MAC cards. Now they want me to pay to use online bill pay? I don't think so. The most frustrating part of all of this was when I called to speak to the manager about it, she tried to tell me that I must be mistaken, that I couldn't have possibly been using online bill pay for free. It's always been $6.95 a month. I faxed her my online bill pay paperwork, and she still insisted I had to be wrong. It's bad enough they want to rob me blind with all these fees, but now they are telling me I'm an idiot, too. I hardly think if I hadn't paid my bills for a year that someone---the gas company, the insurance company, the phone company---wouldn't have tried to collect on me by now. But still, I must be mistaken.

I did a random check of other area banks, and none of them (save PNC, which is not my idea of a real bank anyway) charge for online bill pay. So I called my bank back and told them enough was enough, I was finding a new place to store my money. They didn't seem to care. What a shock. Maybe if I had a few thousand dollars in their bank it'd get their attention....or maybe it'd just get me more bank fees.