Wesabe Asks Which Banks Charge the Most in Fees - and More?

The data comes from Wesabe members, who use the company's free, Web-based tool to get a better understanding of how they spend. Wesabe aggregates and analyzes financial transaction data from bank and credit card accounts, and uses that data to help guide consumers to the best merchants, and the greatest value for their money.

Overdraft fees are a common frustration for consumers and a profit center for banks. In the seven months since Wesabe's launch, members have paid more than $200,000 in overdraft fees alone. Following is a look at the average amount Wesabe members have paid in overdraft fees in the past seven months at five major U.S. banks (based on average number of overdrafts per account and average cost per overdraft):

1. Wachovia: $26.63 (0.99 overdrafts per account; $26.79 average fee)
2. U.S. Bank: $22.42 (0.70 overdrafts per account; $31.85 average fee)
3. Washington Mutual: $21.14 (0.76 overdrafts per account; $27.76 average fee)
4. Bank of America: $15.19 (0.48 overdrafts per account; $31.41 average fee)
5. Wells Fargo: $12.42 (0.38 overdrafts per account; $32.59 average fee)

"Our data revealed an interesting pattern -- while Wachovia charged the lowest average overdraft fee, they made up for it by charging fees much more often, putting them at the top of our list in total overdraft fees paid by members," said Marc Hedlund, co-founder and chief product officer of Wesabe. "On the other hand, even though Wells Fargo's average fee per overdraft was the highest, they charged significantly fewer overdrafts per account, actually making them a better deal for the majority of our users."

Looking at how members have categorized or "tagged" purchases and their satisfaction rankings, Wesabe found that members express the highest satisfaction when spending money on the outdoors and camping. Not surprisingly, the lowest satisfaction comes from spending money on fees and loans, but not far behind is phones -- especially cell phones. "People really hate their cell phone providers," Hedlund noted, "and cable companies aren't far behind. In industries where there is the least competition -- regulated monopolies and oligopolies -- there's also the least consumer satisfaction."

One way Wesabe helps members get more satisfaction from where they are spending and what they are purchasing is the Wesabe Merchant pages. Members can look up a merchant and view average transaction size, customer satisfaction and where else customers of particular merchants shop. For example, the Amazon.com merchant page shows that members spend an average of $43 per visit and $20 per month at Amazon.com, and offers four tips for saving money at Amazon.com.

The Wesabe database:

• Contains more than $500 million in transaction data uploaded by members
• Includes member ratings for more than 75,000 merchants
• Has 1.5 million tags (category labels such as "groceries," "phone," etc.) applied to merchants by members
• Is constantly growing -- members upload data nearly every minute of every day
• Helps members track more than 10,000 financial goals in the site's Goals section
• Supports banks in 30 countries and provides automatic currency conversion for 36 currencies

All information found in the Wesabe database is member-owned, meaning that members supply the transaction data and can export or delete their data at any time. As stated in the company's Data Bill of Rights, "Your data is your data, not ours. Our job is to help you understand and act on your data." The complete Bill of Rights can be found here: http://www.wesabe.com/page/security. "We take the trust of our members very seriously, and offer the strongest privacy protection and the greatest control over data of anyone in the industry," said Hedlund.