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Comment by kiwih | Hacker News Reader

Given the list of things one can do to prevent the inactivity fee includes the simple "Log in to your account", this fee seems fair to me, especially since they will also be emailing account-holders with enough time that they can take any of the activity actions before being charged.

One would wonder why someone would leave sums of money in an online account without even checking that it still existed at least once a year!

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What seems fair is telling customers there will be a fee before they open an account. If they want to add a fee after the fact, they shouldn't be charging that fee without the customer opting-in.

Unfortunately not even banks do that. They change their fee structure all the time, only announcing that their new terms will come into effect starting date X.

Then you suddenly have to pay an account fee or pay a custody fee if you keep more than 50.000€ in your account.

In Germany banks are required to collect explicit agreement by their customers. Banks are sending out updated terms on paper, requesting a signature. Not just an "accept" checkbox.

That's probably why Paypal excludes German accounts from their fees. Would they even be able to process anything on paper?

This is a recent change.

Check this: https://www.ing.de/hilfe/neueagb/

> In der Vergangenheit sind wir von Ihrer Zustimmung ausgegangen, wenn Sie den mitgeteilten Änderungen nicht innerhalb von 2 Monaten widersprochen haben. Seit dem Urteil des Bundesgerichtshofs im April 2021 zu den Allgemeinen Geschäftsbedingungen der Banken benötigen wir nun Ihre ausdrückliche Zustimmung.

> Ab Ende November geht es los – dann brauchen wir das erste Mal Ihre Zustimmung. Im Online-Banking oder in der neuesten Version der App.

So this clearly doesn't require a paper process.

you're absolutely correct, stealing customer funds is totally fine /sarc

Why is this "stealing"? Seems like a really strong word to use.

I suppose as long as a lawyer puts unilateral changes into writing, it’s legal.

steal, verb: to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice.

The bigger question is, why do you think this isn't stealing?

They are taking money from people.

Sick, imprisoned, travelling. There are plenty of reasons why someone can be temporarily unable to use the internet.

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