BNZ Cave In To Fiscal Losers
From September 1, those customers who have insufficient funds in their account to cover a payment or withdrawal will no longer be charged a fee.
Fees are charged by all the banks and can be steep. BNZ currently charges $35 if it dishonours a payment because of insufficient funds, $20 if it honours the payment and allows the customer to go into overdraft, and $5 for an unpaid internet bill payment.
That's $25 million of revenue for BNZ that will now not only have to absorb the time cost and other direct costs in having accounts overdrawn, but will be taking money from people with perfect credit histories like myself to cover the overdrawn amounts. Well not me as I do not bank at BNZ. But this may create a precedent with banks. BNZ's reasoning is strange as well:
Going by the number of times it had to charge the fees, BNZ had concluded they were not an effective deterrent to customers' going into overdraft.
Say what? So what is the deterrent now?? Oh yeah BNZ is going to absorb $25 million of fees/costs etc......right......
The fees would not be made up in any other way. "We hope it [scrapping them] is a way of gaining new customers to the bank."
What sort of new customers? Dropkick customers that's what. And it is not just low income people in this category. High spending absent minded middle wage earners and sometimes top wage earners meet this category.
Lets hope the interest is massive.
posted by Cactus Kate at 2:24 AM
10 Comments:
so the BNZ are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. this year overdraft rates will be higher, account fees will be based on things such as unarranged overdrafts yada yada yada.
THATS why retail banking product managers are remunerated. Pure genius.
;)
I guess its about not pissing off your good customers. I happen to agree with this and wonder why it has taken like 20 years for them to wake up. Their point is that timing is often of the essence. Often timing that is outside of the customers influence.
Getting a $35.00 fee for a $10.00 transaction because the timing of a deposit from another source including another bank has been and will always be bullying and outrageous.
It really has nothing to do with the amount that you earn and may or may not have surplus but has everything to do with good customer service.
Clearly repeat offenders need to be sorted but if it happened to me, as it has when rent payments have not been made, then I piss the bank off by tying up staff time and demanding reimbursement. Costs them all that $35 dollars and pisses of me, the customer.
I have no objection to being asked to pay interest although even then those banks that do expect usury rates while paying nought on positive balances.
You should remember that with greater use of electronic banking the money goes around at greater velocity but for that to happen the funds must be cleared. The banks are the beneficiaries of that timing making millions on much more liquid funds than were available when cheques were the predominant money transaction.
Don't cry for the banks, after all they seldom ever lose and have been responsible for much of the worlds monetary problems,(including the present lot), for the last two centuries.
Long over due change.
This irritates me too - I'm a BNZ customer and have never paid these fees because I've never had anything dishonoured. Simple to avoid really. There are a heap of things they charge that they could have cut that would have also benefited the 'paying' customers as well.
Brilliant!!! A cynical person might suggest that $25 million is very cheap PR to distract from the (unwarranted) flack the BNZ have been getting recently.
Cave into losers? Hardly - this is purely a marketing ploy to detract from the conduit case bad publicity. Another 5 basis points on overdraft rates or loan rates and the BNZ makes back 75 million. but the publicity is great.
PR? Come on.....again the only people who care about bank fees are those with such low balances that they have fees.
If you keep a decent balance with a bank they waive fees.
That's a good customer that a bank should be attracting. That's a bank where I want my money to be kept. A bank for winners not losers.
will we see more bounced checks and declines at the Eftpos/ATM.
I know what is in my bank account before I spend and I am sure Kate and others are the same. Just turn off the losers money tap make them think before they spend , get them to understand fiscal responsibility .
May be it is a bit hard to do that with Wack it on The Bill Phil saying the country should borrow and hope, and Cullen gutted some of the most important legislation of the 90's when he dismantled the Fiscal Responsibility Act that should have stood for time immemorial as a tribute to Ruth Richardson.
My bank has a habit of honouring credit card purchases, and charging me a fee for the privilege. If they just returned insufficient funds, I'd use a different credit card.
I have enough money to pay it, I pay it in full every month, they know that. Problem is that if I increase the limit on my card, the other half can get a little out of control. My preference is for them to treat the limit like it is - as a limit. I have it for a reason, and I expect them to apply it. Choosing to let me go over the limit (despite me having explicitly asked them to put the damn thing on), and then further charging me for the privilege, really gives me the shits.
Calling people losers because an AP slips their mind and they don't fancy keeping a buffer in their cheque account is a bit steep.
Banks don't have to give overdrafts to customers and they don't have to make funds available such that a person might be overdrawn. I'd rather my card just got declined than have it go through only to be whacked with a fee afterwards.
I'm all for free market capitalism and rewarding hard work, thrift and enterprise etc. but there is no need to be a dick about it. So you might get a quarter percent less return and have to forgo the wagyu beef this month? Cry me a river. Why punish someone who is already in the shit?
Cactus @ 10:52am
Here is a true story for you Kate about Westpac.
I have a revolving credit mortgage but it is fully paid off, pay off my credit card every month in full, and have systems that ensure I do not have overdrafts, unfunded APs etc. AND I have a more than decent balance with them.
When I went in to discuss a cheaper interest rate for a significant "line of credit" as a war chest for investment purposes--my "private banker" says he cant do it because I am a not a good client. Because I do not pay them any interest ("your total business with us last year was zero").
The bastards want me to pay fees because the 'value' of my business with them is zero--i.e. I do not pay them interest or fees for them to care--no concession for my significant deposits or any future business from me--period
And they wont waive my f**ing $300 annual fees for a 'REDPAC' account (it does not have credit card and transaction fees) for the same reasons.
Wont be with them for long.
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