For long, money lenders have tried to take advantage of borrowers. Mortgage financers imposed huge interests on the properties they mortgaged and banks also followed suit. I really don’t need to emphasize on how credit card agencies harasses their clients. Recently, owing to the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, the credit card agencies and other money lenders, fully knowing that their money extracting games will not be entertained by the government from 2010, hurriedly came up with new ways to extract whatever they can till the last moment. So interest rates were hiked further, overdraft fee stringency, lowered credit limits amongst others. The clients are not lambs to suffer these atrocities anymore. They have already started revolting. Let us see some ways in which they have started doing so.

Consumers Refuse To Transact With Problematic Money Lenders

Gone are the days when the borrower would fall on his knees in front of the lender for money. The borrowers have a lot of choices now. They are not ready to take any unfairness from the lenders. If a particular bank is giving problems, they would gladly move over to another bank for money.

Apart from this common measure there are a lot of ways in which the customers are revolting against unfair lender practices.

Closing Accounts/ Withdrawing Large Chunks of Money from Their Banks

Account holders are withdrawing large amounts of money from their accounts in banks with which they are dissatisfied. Poor returns and bad service are prompting clients to withdraw their monetary balances from banks and keep only small amounts of money in them. Top banks of the nation are bearing the brunt of consumer ire. Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Chase are seeing many of their clients switching loyalties or withdrawing huge amounts of money from their accounts. People are opting for small local banks instead. Trustco Albany is a local bank that is seeing a lot of new accounts being opened with it recently. Not only the middle class Americans, but even the rich are opening accounts in the local banks of late.

Online Banking on the Rise

With bank consumers not being satisfied with big banks, online banking is fast gaining popularity with Americans. Tower Group predicts that in the coming couple of years, direct banking is going to increase rapidly. People are finding online banking more convenient. Online banking seems to be the solution to many problems that people genereally face with brick and mortar banks. The costs of maintqaing a brick and mortar bank are much more than online banks and as a result the fees are very high. Even ATM fees of online banks are much  lower in comparison to their brick and mortar counterparts.

Another measdure that consumers are taki9ng against unfair banking practices is refulsal to comply with the unfair rules. The last thing a bank would do is to argue with the clients in court about their customer policies. Apart from the government, Americans are taking personal steps for protecting themselves from the paws of  big unjust banks.