I have to hand it to the public relations/marketing department of Bank of America. I cannot determine if their public relations messages are genius or an insult to my intelligence.

Back in November of last year, Bank of America declared that they were not going to raise rates on credit card holders anymore. They were going to be the good guys and put a stop to all of that credit card abuse. Of course, three months later in February 2010, they were going to be limited in doing so anyway with the new Credit Card Act. My guess is that they had already raised rates on their cardholders so making that announcement was no big sacrifice. However, just like a politician, those sound bites make for good PR for anyone not really paying attention.

Now, the PR department strikes again. They announced yesterday in grand fashion that they are going to stop charging overdraft fees for debit card holders. No longer will they allow consumers to spend money that they don’t have.

So once again, you have to ask the question – Is Bank of America really making a big sacrifice and being the good guy? After all, that is a big revenue producer for them.

The answer is no for two reasons. First, the gouging consumers program of allowing customers to go into overdraft and then charging them a fee had run its course. Just like in the case of raising interest rates by credit card companies, the consumer pressure was getting to the point where credit card companies were going to be forced to stop the abuse.

Second, and what makes this so comical, federal regulators’ new regulations, which will go into effect July 1st, force banks to stop allowing customers to go into overdraft unless the customer opts into the program. Bank of America still has a program where customers can opt into the overdraft program. Plus this new Bank of America policy doesn’t go into effect until mid-June. So they are just announcing they are going to comply with the rules that they will be forced to comply with anyway.

How about changing up that press release a little bit? “Bank of America has just announced that they are going to comply with the new regulations that are to go into effect July 1st by not allowing customers to go into overdraft. However, customers can still opt into the program.”

So is this an insult to your intelligence or great PR that makes Bank of America look like the good guy?

Tags: Bank of America, Bob Brooks, Credit CARD act, federal regulators, overdraft