How many bank ads do you reckon you've seen this year? Well, you haven't seen one quite like this, unless you saw the sneak peak on the 7pm Project last night. Click here to watch the ad the banks don't want you to see.
Can you believe the gall of the big banks? The Commonwealth Bank nearly doubled the RBA's interest rate rise on Tuesday, and the other banks may soon follow. And when they're not gouging us on our mortgages, they're charging unfair and unlawful penalty fees for minor defaults.
These fees hit Australians who can least afford it the hardest. Instead of acting, so far banks just keep increasing the millions of dollars they spend on brand building TV ads.
But we can turn their brand power on its head with this hilarious ad, which exposes the hypocrisy of the big banks. If we can get it enough air-play, then every time people see another bank ad they'll think of our parody, turning the banks' big marketing budgets against them. Help get this ad on the air so we can build consumer demand for change:
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/NoMoreGreed
The average Australian household pays over $1,600 a year in bank fees, including those passed onto us by other businesses.1 That's more than we pay for electricity!
Long standing legal principles suggest that banks only have the right to charge us for the costs they incur in managing these defaults, which in the day of computers are almost negligible. But instead they charge us 10, 20 and even 30 times their cost, making $1.2 billion of profit on penalty fees alone.
Some of the highest fees (up to $30) are charged when we go over our credit card limit, but what's the point of having a limit if the banks will accept charges above it, only to slug us with a big fee? Banks get away with this by burying it in the fine print, but if you put this ad on the air we can expose this unfair and unlawful practice:
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/NoMoreGreed
For many of us, bank penalty fees are an annoyance, but they hit lower income families and those under financial stress particularly hard. We've heard from a family who are losing their house because of penalty fees stacking up on top of each-other. We heard from another GetUp member who got hit for these fees after paying for cancer treatment on a credit card, and from a tradesperson whose small-business credit rating has been ruined by fees due to bank administrative errors.
If all of us stand together we can keep the banks honest and protect the most vulnerable from their unfair practices.
Put this ad on the air, so we can rally bank customers nationwide to demand better, fairer banking practices and a fair go for all Australians.
Thank you for doing your part,
The GetUp Team
PS - We're working closely with respected consumer advocacy group CHOICE on this campaign and over 14,000 GetUp members have already signed up to a large class action lawsuit to recover unlawful penalty fees. To take on the power of the banks we need to pressure them through the government, the courts and as hundreds of thousands of bank customers. This ad is a crucial part of that strategy--click here to put it on the air.
1 The Australia Institute, 'Bank fees add more to cost of living than electricity bills', September 22, 2010
2 Reserve Bank of Australia, 'Banking fees in Australia', Reserve Bank of Australia Bulletin, June 2010.
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