Originally Posted by CarlosTheGaucho

You basically get charged small fees for just about everything.

Sending money, receiving money, monthly fee for owning an account, monthly fee for any services to go with the account (such as text messages once the account balance changes etc.), charges for the statements that you receive by post every month (which is quite useless but you can't opt out since very few banks enable to receive e-statements only), you also might get screwed on exchange rate or additional fees if you receive wire from abroad in another currency (getting a check and depositing was cheaper in case of USD last time I checked) etc.

They used to charge even for depositing money, now they charge only if the deposit is done by somebody else then the account holder ($2.50), besides ATM fees which are about $2 if you don't use an ATM belonging directly to your bank (which is cheaper, about 40p) you even get charged a small fee for things like checking your account balance through ATM with some banks etc.

Then there are also various annual fees etc. it's quite complex.

Not to mention they frequently change their fees structure and conditions so you can easily get hit by additional or higher charges than usual without any explicit notice unless you keep an eye on that thoroughly.

If you have an account that is busy it can rack up to quite an interesting sum, especially if you take the effort and put all the fees together over a year.

I remember I read the local banks get as much as 56 pct. of their revenue from fees, which must be quite unique on a worldwide level.