Albany, NY – Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand wants to give federal regulators the power to ban banks and credit card companies from charging extra for paper statements.
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Ms. Gillibrand says such fees punish customers who don’t have Internet access, especially poor and older customers. She says there are about 2 million households in New York alone without Internet access.
Ms. Gillibrand is offering an amendment to the financial regulatory reform bill before Congress that would give the fee-banning power to an independent bureau Democrats want created within the Federal Reserve.
Her aides say a growing number of banks and credit card companies are charging the fees.
Let the banks run their own businessess and the market will decide what services customers will pay for. Why do we have to subsidize those who choose to impose higher costs on the banks by not having internet access. If you don’t want to pay the fees than some bank will offer accounts that provide free paper statments.
Only the govt. Can charge for every thing a fee? It reminds me of the statement don’t steal the govt does not like competition
They are passing all sorts of laws about being green that are costing alot more than these fees, and that’s ok.
Generating paper invoices costs the company money and they should be able to charge for it.
Can congress let the banking industry live?
There are merits to both sides of the argument, but if one understands to ban it way ONLY banking? Why not all others as well like EZ pass who charges $1 for paper statement.
This is just one other shtick to drive the banks out of business
BTW – an easy way around it is to charge everyone the fee and offer a discount equals to it for those who voluntary agrees to receive email statements only. (I got this idea from the dams in the health care tax bill)
if somone dosent like the fees he dosent have to buy, What happned to freedom
what about phone companies?
doesn’t matter anyway because they will simply inflate every bill by X and give a credit of X to those customers who opt for no paper bills.