 NickPurveyor of common sensePremium,VIP,MVM
join:2000-10-29
Smithtown, NY | Nickels and dimes Anyone else find this statement particularly interesting
quote:
The concept of a human contact fee actually began at the National Bank of Chicago in 1995, when they started charging customers to speak to a live teller.
That's why there's a 2$ fee to take your cash out of an ATM at a (non-affiliated) bank. WHY?
Soon it will be
5$ to talk to a real person
2$ to pay by phone
1$ to pay by internet
Then they will tack on a 5% convenience charge like ticketmaster.
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Stupidity, like hydrogen, is one of the basic building blocks of the Universe.
Gallery * Life * Work |
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| said by Nick:That's why there's a 2$ fee to take your cash out of an ATM at a (non-affiliated) bank. WHY? Because they can. ATM's have been identified as profit centers, so the banks are going to charge whatever they can to maximize that profit. You may recall that, when ATM's first appeared, many banks charged you a fee to use their own machines. That fee is pretty much gone now, but I think that's just because there was too much competition for them to keep charging it. Some bank somewhere dropped the fee, and so its competitors had to do the same or risk losing customers. The same holds true with credit card annual fees. You used to have to pay around $20/year just to carry a Visa or Mastercard.
It's all about what the market will bear, or, to put it more simply, what people are willing to pay. If companies can get people to pay these fees, they will charge them. Otherwise, they won't. |
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| reply to Nick
Try something more like $4-5 to pay by the internet. At least the last time I looked into paying a couple of my bills by the internet like my electricity bill it was about $4 to complete the transaction. |
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