Why do many customers lose millions in bank text message fees?

Ms. TTH, a customer using BIDV bank services, said that on November 20, she was surprised to see that her account had been deducted nearly 1 million VND in BSMS service fees for October 2024.

" I don't understand why BIDV bank deducted nearly 1 million VND for BSMS fee, while it is usually only 9,000 VND/month ," Ms. H shared.

Similarly, Ms. Le Minh N., owner of a grocery store in Hanoi, said that she received a text message deducting VND 822,000 from her account opened at BIDV with the same content "BSMS service fee October 2024". This amount of money made her "fall backwards", not understanding why the service fee for October had skyrocketed.

Sharing on many social networking groups, many people said that previously the monthly BSMS service fee was only a few tens of thousands of dong, but now it has suddenly increased to hundreds of thousands of dong.

Regarding this issue, BIDV's media representative said that from October 1, BIDV has applied a new fee schedule for individual customer services. In particular, the most notable change is the cost of the account balance change notification service (BSMS service).

Many customers are surprised because BSMS service fees have increased unusually high.

BIDV said this decision is due to the roadmap for adjusting banking SMS services of telecommunication networks. Specifically, the BSMS service fee for regular customers, generating 15 SMS/newspaper subscription/month is 10,000 VND/subscription/month. Meanwhile, regular customers generating 15 SMS/newspaper subscription/month, the fee will be calculated at the unit price of 700 VND/SMS.

For premium, Premier, Premier Elite and Prive customers, SMS balance change notification fee is free. In addition, all customers can receive balance changes via BIDV SmartBanking application.

Explaining more specifically, a leader of BIDV bank said that BIDV is only an intermediary unit. Although it directly collects this fee, this amount will then be paid to network operators such as Viettel, Vinaphone, Mobiphone, etc.

Previously, most people had the habit of using cash, the BSMS fee was very low, so many people did not pay attention. At that time, this fee was set at 9,000 VND/month/account.

But later, when digital transformation was implemented, cashless payments were promoted, and money transfer transactions became popular, with some business customers making thousands of transactions per month.

Therefore, the banking system has a policy of free service for high-end customers. For other customers, if the number of messages generated per subscriber in a month is less than 15 messages, the fee is 10,000 VND/month (excluding 10% VAT). If the number of messages generated per subscriber is greater than 15 messages, the fee is calculated based on the generated output of 700 VND/message (excluding 10% VAT).

" SMS messaging fees are essentially a service provided and collected by a third party - telecommunications carriers. Therefore, banks charge customers to cover the costs paid to telecommunications carriers ," the leader explained.

Also according to BIDV, the unit has adjusted the service fee schedule for account balance change notifications, empowering each customer to proactively choose services that suit their actual usage needs. Customers are encouraged to receive notifications on the digital banking application (OTT) for free on BIDV Smartbanking.

To avoid paying a lot of money for this fee, customers must cancel the service of receiving balance change notifications by logging into the BIDV SmartBanking application, going to "Balance Changes" and then selecting "Cancel Registration".

To track balance fluctuations, customers can choose the free text messaging service on the digital banking application (OTT message).

The bank said it only sends text messages to notify customers of balance changes for transactions of VND30,000 or more.

According to PV's investigation, not only BIDV, many other commercial banks have also changed the way they calculate SMS Banking service fees since the beginning of this year. Most banks have the same way of calculating fees based on the actual number of messages generated.

According to BIDV's old fee schedule (applied from November 1, 2024 to September 30, 2024), customers who generate less than 500 messages only have to pay a fee of VND 13,200/month; customers who generate more than 500 messages and have a non-term deposit balance of over VND 20 million will pay a fee of VND 100,000/month.

Customers with a non-term deposit balance of less than VND20 million, generating 500 - 1,000 messages/month will be charged VND100,000/month, from 1,000 to 2,000 messages will be charged VND500,000 and the remaining cases will be charged VND1 million/month. However, BIDV's premium customers are still exempted from balance change notification fees.

Chau Anh

Source: https://vtcnews.vn/vi-sao-nhieu-khach-hang-mat-tien-trieu-phi-tin-nhan-ngan-hang-ar909050.html