<<Starting next year, Bank of America will charge a small number of customers an annual fee, ranging from $29 to $99. The bank has characterized the fee as experimental. But card holders who have never carried a balance or paid late fees could be among those affected.>>

Once again, the banks are proven to always do the stupid thing - so they are hoping the balance-carrying cardholders would pay enough interests / late fee, whatever, to be their profit centers, and then penalize those who pay off their balance every month, never late-pay, thus a much better credit risk... and then they would spend money to try to correct the defaulted accounts at 60 cents per dollar?

Have they ever learned anything from the subprime debacle?

Besides, such actions would reduce the number of cards a person holds, so the banks may only collect fees on probably 20 to 30% of currently open cards - much less than their projections.