Fighting the bank

What's $5 a month to Bank of America? The money clearly meant more to the financial giant's debit-card holders, because they fought harder for it.

After enduring anger, ridicule and, yes, political attacks for weeks over its proposed debit-card fee, the Charlotte-based bank relented.

The little people won - and big businesses everywhere should ask themselves why.

It's not unusual for businesses to raise prices or add fees. Often, they have compelling reasons. A common cause is higher costs of their own. If they're paying out more money, they need to increase their revenue. An unattractive alternative is to cut costs by trimming payroll.

In this case, banks stand to lose billions of dollars, analysts say, because of new financial regulations that cap the "swipe fees" merchants pay the banks when customers use debit cards. Consumers already pay that fee through higher prices; Bank of America was asking them to pay it directly.

Bad idea. Banks have an image problem just now, especially those that received huge government bailouts after making very bad business decisions (Bank of America's purchase of Merrill Lynch comes to mind), while continuing to pay huge salaries to top executives. So customers weren't willing to hand over even $5 a month for the privilege of spending the money they deposited in the bank.