If your bank is buying the competition or selling out to them, you may want to add the words ''higher'' and ''fees'' to your banking vocabulary.

Financial institutions will likely ''use this as an opportunity to raise everybody's fees,'' said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director in the office of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, the federation of state public interest research groups based in Washington.

While such fees can range from charges for replacing a lost ATM card to returning your paper checks, one big one to watch out for, said experts, is fees levied against your account when you bounce a check or when the bank covers overdrafts -- purchases, withdrawals or payments you make with not enough money in your account to cover them.

Consumers pay at least $17.5 billion a year in such overdraft fees, said Jean Ann Fox, director of financial services for the Consumer Federation of America, and the amount of those fees has been ``steadily increasing.''

The average high is $37.50, up 15 percent from 2005, according to a federation survey of overdraft fees and practices.

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