Service Charge and Fees are Illegal

There is absolutely no doubt that fees, fines and penalties are completely illegal and this concept applies to anyone that does business in the US, including banks, credit card companies, your doctors, your lawyer (a lawyer can have an ethics complaint filed against them for such a practice) and ANYONE else offering a product or service in commerce or industry. This concept involves a state wide law, call the Uniform Commercial Code ("UCC") which governs business in all 50 state and 7 US territories. These uniform laws, and the UCC in particular, is one of the singular reasons why the US has become over the years, a super economic power in the world. When you tamper with the UCC, you tamper with the basic efficiencies of the US economy. The courts know this. The legislators throughout the US know this. That is why they enacted the UCC throughout the US and 7 territories.

Getting back to fees, fine and penalties, then why are they illegal? The reason for this is that needless fees, fines and penalties hamper business in the US and judges won't impose them. People should be free to break their contracts and go elsewhere when the economy changes. This creates more business, more cash flow and more good and services when people are only getting paid for what they sell or service.

This about it, to allow a business person to charge something extra for a contract defaults (which happens all the time, we constantly made decisions regarding how to make our lives better and more efficient, and well, if you need to part B instead of party A because party B came up later but it's family, you know you will do that because that relationship is more important.

Now, when banks do this it becomes down right evil. It slides into the field of "usury" which is where Dante put entities that practiced this on the lowest rungs of hell. When you overdraft your checking account for a few minutes and your bank charges you $35 but you have plenty of money in that bank, except in a different account, that's definitely "money for nothing and chicks for free". Talk about communism for corporations. Yikes!

The banks know about all your accounts and yet they do this all the time anyway. People complain about bailing out the banks and credit card companies, but they don't realize is that all the fees, fines and penalties they have been charging for years is completely illegal. If you ask me and many lawyers and economists, one of the major reasons for the current crunch in the credit business is exactly these illegal fees, fines and penalties. They add up so quickly, consumers can't pay their debts and so they stop paying all together and the whole system topples like dominoes. Now no one will loan money because they know it is likely a consumer eventually won't pay a dime. But the financial industry brought this stalemate upon themselves. It's completely karmic in nature. Banks and credit card companies have to drop these illegal practices or we will lose the entire economy eventually. Banks won't loan and consumers won't borrow, (which is happening now, studies show 70% of consumers are using debit cards only), and so the economy will stagnate.

And credit card companies that charge $20, $30, even up to $50 for a day or two late payment are absolutely no better--they are down right evil in doing so. The employees that enforce these invalid, illegal and unenforceable covenants are equally as responsible in their own right.

My suggestion is that if you have a job in a bank or credit card company and you are part of this system, is to simply get another job. It's not worth it.