As the events of the last couple of months have shown, Americans do not like to pay bank fees. Indeed, a new survey shows, a majority think the only acceptable A.T.M. fee is no fee at all.

More than half of those surveyed for Ally Bank (an online bank that, surprise, promotes its lack of fees, and reimburses the fees its customers are charged for using other banks’ A.T.M.’s) said they thought the only fair A.T.M. fee was zero.

The survey also found that about half of those polled (53 percent) said they would rather take time to search for a free A.T.M. than pay a fee for the closest, most convenient option.

The telephone survey for Ally Bank was conducted in October by the Opinion Research Corporation among 1,016 adults (510 men and 506 women). The margin of sampling error was plus or minus three percentage points.

Here are some other findings in the survey:
• 84 percent of respondents said they didn’t believe it was acceptable to charge a fee for checking.
• 79 percent said they didn’t believe it was all right to charge a monthly maintenance fee.
• 77 percent said they didn’t think it was right to charge an A.T.M. fee.

The findings suggest that many bank customers will be disgruntled, as banks continue to impose a variety of fees on their customers to make up revenue they have lost because of new limits on fees they can charge merchants for processing debit card transactions.

What sort of bank account fees, if any, do you think are acceptable?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=42402b9596a4b3351b4b4ea68d59b6ed