The storm has been brewing for a while now and it becomes real tomorrow Tuesday, March 1, 2016 when the Consumer Advocacy Foundation of Nigeria (CAFON) and the Coalition of Nigerian Consumer Protection Associations carry out their threat of a “No Banking Day” to protest against frivolous bank charges.
CAFON, led by Sola Salako has been in the fore front of the protest, having visited several media houses to mobilise support.
As if to justify the protest, some claimed that those GTBank charged N199/$ over the weekend were debited alert on Monday morning to make up for the N299/$ they were supposed to charge them. Reports say some folks are already threatening to take them to court over the issue.
In a series of online posts called: “Daylight Robbery By Banks With ‘Sms Alert Charges.” one of the movement’s leading voices, Dr. Ope Banwo said:
“I wonder what the CPC (Consumer Protection Council) or the CBN are looking at to have allowed our banks to get away with making over 800% PROFIT from simple SMS alerts to their customers when they are not even in the SMS Business!
It is shocking to finally realise that the banks charge you anywhere from N4 (Gtbank); N9 (First Bank); N8 (Ecobank ) for EVERY SMS ALERT they send to you for a transaction on your account. That’s ROBBERY!
As someone who owns an SMS portal and who has trained 1000s of youths to start BULK SMS business, I know the cost of text message is less than N1 when done in bulk. As a matter of fact some portals have it as low as 60kobo… YET, our banks charge us N8 or N9 per SMS. (that’s over 800% profits) AND sometimes they can send you 5 sms alerts a day and they charge for EVERY ONE OF THEM SEPARATELY at the rate of N4, N8, N9 etc.
This daylight robbery is one of the reasons we are organizing NO BANKING DAY TOMOROW, MARCH 1ST….Show your support by refusing to do any banking transaction on March 1st – NO ATM, NO BANK WITHDRAWALS. NO BANKING TRANSACTION… #NoBankingDay
Question is: Will you be participating in #NoBankingDay tomorrow?
The publicity isn’t good enough i guess cos I’m just getting to hear about it now whch will make it hard for me to participate, tho i support it 100%
If I need to pay for a service at the hospital or fuel my car or my rent is due for payment and I have run out of cash will I not go to the bank? While I understand the concerns, the approach is very cosmetic. Boycotting the bank for one day will not affect the operations of major banks significantly.
I think the level of awareness is low, but its a good starting point for us as citizen living in a country full of exploitation by corporate organisations, its hard to participate cos everything require funds to sort out in Nigeria.but fully its a welcome development