My bank was recently acquired, out of collapse, by one of the largest banks in the country. The transition from one to the other was going pretty smoothly, and I hadn’t noticed any changes – for the most part – in how they did business with me. Until now.

I received a letter last week telling me that I had gone beyond the limited transactions" my account allowed online and via check (three!), and that I had been charged an over-activity fee for this transgression. I am getting married this month, so I have been writing more than the usual number of checks and conducting more than the usual number of online transactions. Still, this has never been an issue before. Clearly in the merger of the two banks, my free checking account had been downgraded, so to speak, to a category that had …