It's the governments fault!

A couple of weeks ago, I got a letter from my bank, Regions Bank, stating that they would start charging four dollars a month for me to use the debit card as well as another 8 dollars a month for the checking account as I did not have an automatic deposit of at least 500 dollars a month. Considering we are scrapping by on less than 1000.00 a month between my husbands very small pension and my unemployment check, 12 dollars is a lot to us. That is grocery money (we are not getting food stamps even though we would qualify)or something toward the electric bill. When you don't have much, every penny counts. So I went to Regions Bank last week and asked them to clarify the changes for me. The teller said yes, I would be charged 4.00 to use my debit card but I could use it as many times as I wanted (as if that was a fabulous bonus!)and I could use it at their ATM without cost. I told her that I thought these charges were ridiculous, especially in this economy when so many are barely scraping by, just like us. She looked me in the face and said something that I am sure came from the corporate office. "It's not our fault, it's the governments fault!" I told her that contrary to what Regions bank thought, not everyone in southern Illinois gets their information from Fox "news" and that this was not the governments fault but the greed of Regions Bank! She just kind of looked at me in stunned silence. I am sure that the "it's the government's fault" line had worked on most everyone else who had called or been in to complain so she didn't know how to respond to me. I finally broke the silence by telling her I would be changing banks and that I am sure many others would as well. She told me "have a nice day" and walked away from the window.
Yes, it is going to be an incredible hassle to change banks with all the automatic payments I have set up but I think I would change banks anyway now that I know that Regions thinks all their customers are incredibly stupid!

If anyone has any suggestions on banks that do not charge all these fees, please let me know. I have a week to get changed to a new bank.

I have been with my local credit union for more than 10 years now and I will never do business with banksters again.

We do have a credit union but I don't know anything about it.

At least mine is.

$500 minimum balance or direct deposit at least once a month or you get a $7 monthly fee. $5 for unlimited ATM.

What pisses me off is that if you use a teller, they now charge a fee. So you either have to pay per transaction for a teller or pay for the ATM card use. I don't have the energy right now to check out alternatives, but I will be thinking about it.

At least SunTrust is not blaming it on the government, but they will still nickle and dime their customers to death.