Banks: love to hate them
Banks: love to hate them
February 26, 2009
Section: Opinion
If you’re like me, you will love to hate banks, especially the fees they charge for “services” such as writing bank cheques or honouring a direct debit even if it overdraws your account by just $1.
Well get set for a whole new set of charges (not from the banks) from March 3.
This is when the Reserve Bank of Australia implements changes to the Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) system.
Until now, “foreign”-owned ATMs (those not owned by the banks – the ones you might see in pubs or clubs for example) could charge you a fee of up to $2 to use the machine.
From March 3 that law will change and it will be open slather on what the ATM owners can charge you to access your own money.
If there is no bank-owned ATM within cooee, you can bet you’ll be hit with a substantial fee for the “service” provided by the ATM owner.
Frankly, the whole banking system is like a licence to print money.
We were conned in the 1980s into accepting direct credit of our wages because it “was more productive”.
But all it did was enable banks and other financial institutions to hold us to ransom and take away any control we had of our hard-earned funds.
Now we have to pay to have our pay deposited, then take it out – especially if you use an ATM other than your own banks.
When you take into account the massive profits banks make, and the obscene remuneration packages some of their senior executives “earn”, it seems to the layman that fees and charges and interest rates (especially on credit cards) are nothing but legal theft.
– Mark Bransdon
Email: markb@kiamaindependent.com.au
