Inactive account fees, the $5 a month that was being withdrawn from your account, has to my personal knowledge been around for at least fifty or sixty years. At one time they were quite common and then several state legislatures wrote laws forbidding the practice. Then when the big national banks began buying senators and representatives and banking was "deregulated" those laws went by the board.

There are banks and other financial institutions that are eschewing all these fees and charges and doing quit well thank you. Most of them do the vast bulk of their business over the internet and only have one physical business location. My bank, USAA, even reimburses me for ATM transactions at "foreign" Banks.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein