Information Hard To Obtain In Person: We have experimented with numerous methods of data collection over the years to obtain the broadest coverage of banks in our surveys. We originally conducted telephone surveys, but found two problems with that approach. First, each year, banks became more and more reticent to answer so many questions and second, many banks were wary that we were actually competitors conducting market research. So, we began sending volunteers to bank branches seeking copies of checking account brochures and Truth In Savings fee schedules.

Each year, we find more banks refuse to provide detailed fee schedules to a consumer who specifically asks for one. Virtually no banks place Truth In Savings fee brochures on their brochure racks, which are otherwise full of information on lucrative (to the bank) checking account overdraft protection plans, the benefits of a debit card, or other marketing information. At most branches, shoppers are forced to wait in line to speak not with a teller but an official behind the desk if they seek detailed fee information. I have been conducting consumer surveys myself for years, and was astonished that on two different occasions my simple request for a detailed fee brochure was rejected at a local Bank of America branch. This experience has been repeated by many of our volunteers and interns, at other banks as well. Bank of America is not by any means the only bank that makes it hard to obtain fee information, merely the biggest.

Those officials behind the desks appear to have been trained to play a shell game -- provide evasive answers to your questions, pretend that all the information is in the "smiling, happy people" brochures on the rack that don't give much information at all, and generally to act as if you are Mars if you want to know how many different account transaction fees that the bank may impose.

And when we rely on the bank regulators to enforce the law, things only get worse. Bank regulators generally have never met a big bank [except once when the Fed's partner in lax regulation, the obscure, little noticed OCC, penalized Providian (no longer so big, and acquired by another bank, anyway)] that could possibly break the consumer laws in such a significant way that its deceptive activities were worthy of a penalty.

This is the same Fed, by the way, that fought with Congress to terminate the requirements of the 1989 savings and loan bailout law (Remember the savings and loan fiasco?) to conduct an annual anonymous survey of bank fees. The last few reports in the series, along with several other interesting Fed reports to Congress that are rarely accompanied by a press release, are available here. Here is the 2003 end of the series.