Cash Machine Withdraw Fees..

Really? If it's that bad use an ATM provided by your bank - that will be free to use.

Alternatively pay the fee for the convenience of having an ATM located where you were.

Why ? Who do you think should pay ?

Why? Who were you thinking should provide them for free (away from bank premises)?

p.s. do you live in Tunbridge Wells by any chance?

Or change your bank to one of the several which allow free withdrawal at post offices, albeit only during PO opening hours (but then, if you can't plan you cash needs that far ahead, prepare to have a very difficult and disappointing life).

To be fair, he wasn't saying they should be free, just that £1.99 is a bit excessive. Having said that, I don't see why this isn't something that won't be settled by market forces, assuming that the charge is clearly displayed before the transaction takes place.

Chris

ah, so "bloody disgusting"="a bit excessive".

WHo knows what he meant, and none of us know what the economics of providing a cash machine is, so whether its "bloody disgusting" or "a bit excessive" we really dont know. They might even have got their sums wrong and be losing money!

I interpreted the gist as closer to that than saying it should be free, but perhaps Fatbøy will clarify.

Chris

I've seen quite a few that charge £1.75

The bank pays the cash machine operator a fee for each withdrawal through the link network.

Secondly, the shop owners use this as a cheap way of banking their takings. They put their takings into the machine, and every time someone withdraws some money from the machine, it is transferred from their account to the shop owner's account.

Most of these cash machine operators are owned by banks anyway. The royal bank of scotland has the biggest network of them.

I would expect them to be provided for free by the site operator as a means of adding value to the service they provide to their customers. People are more likely to use shops with a cash mashine in them than shops without, so it's a kind of loss-leader. That's certainly how most of the big supermarkets see it.

Mark

It's outrageous that they should be making a charge at all. Make no mistake, these machines do not cost the banks anything. They *save* them millions, relative to the alternative.

In the (good) old days before such machines existed, folk had to queue at the bank to withdraw cash over the counter. This was a free service, well, free at point of use, paid for by the zero interest rate on credit balances on one's current account.

The introduction of machines meant that banks could cut back on counter services, and indeed close complete branches on a large scale. It's much cheaper for a bank to rent a couple of square metres from a shop than to maintain a branch.

Generally cash machine withdrawals are still free if you use your own bank's machines or those of banks which are in the same "club". To charge fees of the order of £2 is completely out of order, especially for people who tend to withdraw small amounts. In my case, for example, I don't need a lot of cash because most of my purchases are by card. I don't like carrying much cash anyway, and when I use a machine I don't often take out more than £30, but I don't think I've ever been in the position of needing to use a fee-charging machine.

It might perhaps make more sense for banks to adopt an altogether different charging structure. Something like £10 a quarter per account, which includes 25 free transactions, and 40p per additional transaction. Cash withdrawals, whether at a counter or a machine, should count as ordinary transactions, so 40p if over the limit of

But then they should pay interest on credit balances. So if you were to maintain a mean balance of a couple of grand, you'd still get effectively free banking.

Seems like a win-win.

and....?

Well, if its such a great idea, why dont all businesses fit one?

But not smaller ones. Free choice. If you dont like it, dont use it, you can after all in most circumstances use the same debit card you'd have used to withdraw the money, to pay for the goods or services.

Its great how everyone here seems to know how businesses "should" run themselves better than the people actually managing them! And they all know how much profit they'd make, and how much better off theyd be ...or altertatively, how much less profit they 'should' be making!

So how much money would installing an extra cashpoint in, say, services on the M4, save Barclays Bank? Not a lot I suspect as they havent seen fit (AFAIK) to install one, and its left open to other companies to operate them.

Because not everyone has the same opinion.

I don't use cash machines where I have to pay. My main complaint is not so much with the businesses which operate machines which do charge as with the people who are stupid enough to use them. If businesses can make money out of the stupid then they're less likely to offer products which appeal to the more intelligent. Hence you and I suffer as a result.

Mark

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 23:22:36 +0100, "Tumbleweed" wrote: Free choice. If you dont like it, dont use it, you can

While I agree they're a rip-off, As you say, it is avoidable, especially at supermarkets offering a cash-back facility on debit cards. So it's a tax on the disorganised, as someone in this thread suggested.

Tiddy Ogg.

how do you know what others know ? :-)

The machines are actually fairly expensive.

Not just the initial purchase of the machine, but the cost of having it filled on a regular basis by G4S (or whoever) and the hidden cost of actually buying the bank notes in the first place (it might surprise you to know they aren't free ! and actually cost the institutions more than face value).

In most cases the fee-paying machines are not run by the banks anyway.

Whilst they are cheaper than paying a cashier they are very far from free.

That is the biggest load of crap I have seen on usenet for a long time. Absolutely and totally false.

Ummmmm....this is usenet...I rest my case? I'll be proved wrong when someone here posts a credible article that they authored on the economics of cash machine siting.