In the past seven years, the number of banks in the United States has fallen from 15,000 to about 9,200 as big banks swallowed their smaller regional competitors. The mergers cause frustrating changes. A consolidation usually means new account numbers, PIN numbers, customer service phone numbers and new paper checks. The operational upheaval ties up phone lines and queues at the bank, all of which makes for disgruntled folks at both ends. Banks tend to keep the fee scale which account holders were used to at their old bank for a while, then jack them up for uniformity among all their customers.
Big banks mean bigger fees.
These economies of scale are definitely not passed on to the consumer. The fee that the institution charges its own account holders to reissue or replace an ATM card. Fla. None of the 50 largest U.S. banks made it onto the list. ATM policies are also getting less consumer-friendly, the survey found. The number of banks charging their own customers a fee for using the bank's ATM rose from 6 percent to 9 percent since the last survey, conducted six months earlier.