I started a checking account through x.com recently, it’s an internet based bank, run through an IRL bank. Here’s the cool thing - they refund every single ATM charge that you recieve automatically. No charge for using any ATM.
I only keep a small balance in it, and use it kind of like my petty cash acct and for stuff on the web, because it’s web-based and I don’t fully trust in banking that way. But every time I’ve used an ATM wherever, my fees are refunded. Also, there have been no monthly fees for my account, and I have checks and the rest of the usual. So far, so good.
First of all, banks don’t have a natural monopoly with ATM’s, because there are alternatives to ATM use. Cash, for example. Honest, it works.
I opened a bank account at a bank that has no service fees for savings accounts, as long as you don’t use more than 7 transactions per month. At the beginning of the month my paycheck goes in, and I withdraw enough cash to cover me for the rest of the month. I use an ATM perhaps once or twice a month on average, when unexpected expenses cause me to get more money. But I almost always know days in advance that I’ll be a little short, so I stop at my branch teller on the way home from work.
To the guy who pays $2.75 to get his $10 lunch money on campus: I have no sympathy for you whatsoever. If you can’t manage your money well enough to keep lunch money in your pocket, and are too lazy to walk across the campus to your own machine, you have no cause to complain about the cost. Wake up and manage your life better, instead of complaining to the banks, who at least are offering you the option.
I switched banks because they starting charging me $8 a month if my balance went below $750. When I joined 3 years ago, the fee was $5 for going below $500. I can live with $500. But if I have the better part of a thousand bucks sitting around, I’m putting it in a money market fund where it’ll earn interest. So I quit the bank and notified them in writing why I was doing so.
My advice: If you’re peeved about these charges, withdraw your money and change banks. AND NOTIFY THE BANK WHY, IN WRITING. If enough consumers cast their economic vote, the fees will go away.
I’m an SF resident. I would just like to chime in. No one in SF said that banks can’t charge you for using others ATM’s. It’s the double dipping that was outlawed. Also as others have noted, no one said it couldn’t be done, just that local governments can’t do it. Also, no bank has actually not let others use its ATM’s yet. They were still charging the double fees. Should double dipping be outlawed? Personally I think so. An analogy would be the supermarket charging you a $3 fee everytime you used a non-supermarket bank card.
That wouldn’t be the same thing. Maybe if you used your Safeway member card at Raley’s and both charged you, then it might be analogous.
But I’m surprised more businesses don’t charge a fee for using credit cards. You do realize, don’t you, that the store pays a fee every time you use a credit card?
That’s why gas stations used to (and ocassionally still do) charge more for credit card transactions: their margins were so small they weren’t willing to foot the fee themselves.
Safeway actually makes less money on a loaf of bread when you buy with a credit card. They don’t do it, because they feel credit cards create more purchases and therefore they make it up on volume (and they probably don’t want to listen to customers bitch about their constitutional right to free convenience).
To answer the original question–Banks are regulated by the federal goverment and, by law, only the federal goverment can impose restriction on them. Stupid? Perhaps, but if you restrict the banks so much that they lose money and flounder, the federal goverment, not San Francisco or Santa Monica is the ones who have to bail them out.
You could argue that the restrictions wouldn’t hurt the bank, and you may be right, but the next ones might not. The feds are going to nip this ine in the bud before the locals get to many wild thoughts.
But I don’t pay fees for ATM use as long as I use a Bank One bank. And they are all over the place. Of the last 100 ATM transactions I’ve done, at most 1 has been with another bank. That’s how I avoid the fees.
free market is one issue, but why did the courts overturn a law that was enacted by ‘We the people’- the law was not unconstutional (as far as I know) and was voted on by the people it effects (or affects?) this is what the people want for their comunity
Because the founding fathers had no belief in true, absolute “majority rule.” And neither do you, really…
Also, it WAS unconstitutional, because regulation of banking is a governmental right reserved to Congress by various constituional sources. Banking is a form of interstate commerce, which the states and localities are not given carte-blanche to regulate.
In China I would often ask people “What do you think of the present policy of your government restricting couples to having only one child?” Sometimes the answer was “I think one child is enough”, sometimes it was “I think two would be better”… etc Nobody said to me "I believe the government should not tell us how many children we should have.
This for me is a similar argument. I mean, I just cannot see how in the world the government should tell me how much I can charge for my services. If you do not like what I have to offer, then walk away and don’t use it!
my point is not whether it should be the local government or the feds deciding this. That’s a technicality. My point is this is a free country. If you don’t like what I have to offer you are not obligated to buy it but I should be free to offer whatever I want.
I just cannot grasp why the government, any government, should be intervening. We sound like babies asking daddy government to come and help us. If you don’t like the service, go somewhere else and quit moaning.
Kasuo put it very well: “IMHO, the more government gets involved with our affairs, the more it’ll fuck us over in the long run”
I touched on this earlier, and I still don’t understand why more people don’t do this.
I did a quick check on my ATM usage and fees. During the past year I paid exactly **zero dollars and zero cents ** in ATM fees despite the fact that I visited the the tellers exactly zero times!! Actually I didn’t have to check anything to figure that out, but what I did figure out was that I averaged almost 3.6 ATM transactions a week. How did I do this–simple, I chose a bank with a lot of branches and that charged no ATM fees for using their banks (and that issues a VISA checking card), then simply didn’t use any other bank to take out money.
Comparison shoping when you chose a bank comes in handy.
>> Comparison shoping when you chose a bank comes in handy
yes but many people are too dumb and too lazy and when a politician promises he’ll fix any problem for them they believe him.
The net effect of more government regulation is less supply, less competition and worse service for higher prices… but some people keep voting for these politicians for the same reason they keep buying miracle remedies: because they’re suckers.
Government regulatio doesn’t always result in the disaster everyone seems to think. Televisions not have closed captions because of government regulation. I for one love this feature and use it all the time. I do not think it would have made it mainstream if it were not for the government pushing it.
The govenment at times has stepped in to to investigate price fixing. I think that prices for many things would be much higher without some government nosing around. ATM fees are so high becaus the banks can get away with it. I would not be surprised to see then rise higher. The government has stepped in not too long ago to change how long funds could remain unavailabe for withdrawal after you deposit a check. Banks did not generally care for this. It cut a huge source of profit for them. Unless the government had stepped in we would still be waiting that long to be able to withdraw out money.
>> ATM fees are so high because the banks can get away with it
Yep. That is true with every commodity and service in a free market which, in spite of the flaws it may have, is the system that has proven to offer consumers the best products at the lowest prices.
I am not denying regulations for consumer protection are not necessary. You cannot investigate for yourself the safety of every product you buy etc. But the government should not be in the business of intervening the market.
Anywhere and everywhere where the authorities intervene the free market, the consequence is diminished supply and higher prices. The more the intervention, the worse the situation. I have not sen one exception. Places with rent and housing control have a housing shortage because no one will invest there. Places without those controls do not have that problem because the market will supply.
And do not forget the maxim:
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first thing to be bought and sold are the legislators.
(Brought to you by the US Congress. The best Congress money can buy.)
The whole thing about charging a fee for when your funds dip lower than X amount really irks me as well. A fee …like they are talking my money out for drives in their cars or home for dinner so it won’t get lonely while waiting for the rest of it to show up.
Yes, I also dislike minimum balance fees. I have to keep $1500 just to avoid the fee. I don’t like it but it is the cost of having a bank account. The bank does not want to be handling an account with a balance of $5.62 and I can understand why.
IMHO, many people are lousy bad at handling their finances. If they cannot save a couple thousand bucks to keep in the bank for an emergangy, they are not administrating your finances as they should. That money in the bank would be earning you more elsewhere but that is the cost of having the convenience of a bank account.
I have an 85 year old neighbor who is almost blind and I have to help her read her bills and write her checks. (Can you believe, in spite of this she ocassionally drives her car??!!) She is always short of money and pays late fees all the time. By the end of the month she has no money for groceries and I have to lend her (half of the time I never see it again). She lives on Social Security. When I see those cases of people living on SS and can’t make ends meet I think of her. Should we raise her SS payments? NO WAY! She is a disaster at handling her money and no matter how much you give her, she will still be a disaster. She totalled her car about a year ago and went a bought a brand new one with exhorbitant payments. So it is not the bank taking advantage of her, it is her not being able to handle her affairs. Of course, you can say she is a feeble minded 85 year old, but where is her family? She chooses to be distant from them so she can have her freedom. Well, great, she’ll pay for it in late fees to the bank.
In other words, even if I don’t like it, I still think the bank should be allowed to do whatever they want as long as i can choose not to open an account with them.