China's banking regulator has drafted rules to stop banks from charging their customers excessive fees, which have become a focus of rising frustration in a country where customer service is seldom a priority, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The new rules, issued Friday evening by the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said all fees must be set by banks' head offices and not local branches, that banks must be more transparent when setting prices, and that they must give three months' notice before raising fees.

Customers of Chinese banks have long had to deal with fees that overseas bank users don't. Customers at a bank in one city will often be charged a fee when using the ATMs of the same bank outside the city. But over the past year, fees have become the source of rising frustration, with customers complaining about being charged for everything from transferring funds to changing their Internet banking password.

Fee income has become an increasing proportion of bank revenue, in some cases having risen more than 50 percent as a share of operating income for some of China's biggest banks over the last four years. And as the banks continue to post record-beating profits each quarter, anger has been growing over customer service in general.

Banks questioned in the recent past have said that improving customer service is a priority. None were available for comment following the announcement of the new fee regulations.

Boston Consulting Group, which surveyed 1,600 consumers in 15 Chinese cities last year, said in August that more than half of home- and car-loan seekers claimed that procedures were too time-consuming and that China's main banks took up to a month to process a loan application.

A June survey by consulting firm McKinsey & Co of 56,000 bank customers in Asia found that loyalty among Chinese people to their bank has dropped significantly over the last five years.

"China's front-line banking service is still one step behind the rest of the Asia-Pacific," said Kenny Lam, a partner with McKinsey in Hong Kong. "China still needs to make sure the basics are taken care of."

According to that survey, key factors that drive loyalty in China toward a bank include whether its employees are familiar with bank procedures, whether staff make mistakes with accounts, and whether employees are courteous—factors that didn't even register as concerns throughout Asia as a whole.

"I try not to visit the bank," said Zhang Xiuqin, a 54-year-old from Beijing who has accounts with Bank of China, ICBC and Bank of Beijing, with little attachment to any of them. "Every time I go I waste too much of my time standing in line."

Tina Tian, a 29-year-old Beijing native, spent two hours recently at a Beijing branch of Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd waiting in line and arguing over how to pay her tuition.

"I always end up standing in a long line for at least half an hour, or even longer, to buy electricity, a very simple service, so it's always a frustrating experience," she said. Bank branches also serve as utility portals.

The banking regulator has encouraged banks to offer new services to clients in an effort to diversify their businesses, which have traditionally been dominated by making loans.