I am trying to find out if an account can be advertised as free or no cost if an overdraft plan that has fees attached is available for that account but not mandatory for that account.

Yes, neither the Guidance nor the changes to Regulation DD prohibit you from advertising an account as "free" just because an ODP is attached.

What the guidance suggested and the Regulation DD amendments crystalized is that any advertisement for a "free" account that mentions ODP as a feature must indicate that the ODP servcie is not free. It would also require disclosure of the ODP fees involved plus all of the other ODP advertising disclosures. In effect, mention of the ODP feature becomes a triggering term.

In fact, mentioning the ODP feature not only triggers the advertising disclosures, it also triggers the need for specific periodic statement disclosures beginning in July, 2006 and continuing for at least two years beyond the last promotion of the ODP program.

question on that rule, (diff poster). in the section stating continued periodic statement disclosures at least two years....
if we advertise ODP now, stop before july 2006, we would not need to include the periodic disclosures, because the rule is not retro?
does this sound correct?

I believe that your interpretation is correct. You could, in effect, push the service between now and 7/1/06 and not be subject to periodic statement disclosure if you had ceased ALL promotion by 6/30/06.

However, when you review the rule to determine what "promotion" is, you'll see that it won't be easy to go "cold turkey" on promotions. If you still have the ODP service, and communicate with your customers in almost any way (there are exceptions, but not many) about the service, you're still promoting.