Fees on checking accounts hit an all-time high in 2012, reports the financial website Bankrate.com, with much of the increase coming in charges for use of out-of-network ATMs. According to the side, the average fee assessed by the owner of a foreign ATM climbed 4 percent this year to $2.50.
Combined with the typical charge by a consumer's own bank for an out-of-network withdrawal — $1.57, up 11 percent — the average cost per transaction now stands at a whopping $4.07.
And for the first time ever, all financial institutions surveyed by Bankrate.com reported charging non-customers for ATM transactions.
Other checking account expenses — such as maintenance fees and non-sufficient funds fees — also have risen, due in part to banks' response to new regulations capping overdraft fees.
Do you think it's time regulators stepped in again and capped these fees, or is over-regulation partly responsible for driving up other fees in the first place? Tell us in the comments section below.
ATMs are expensive to maintain and many banks are beginning to close ATM locations. If you don't like the fees, don't use them.
Could you please explain then why your guy Obama claims that ATM machines replaced tellers? I am confident that you can but I would love to hear it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-75KJkJiVRo
I will always remember where I was the day Brian told us he doesn’t always agree with President Obama. 9/28/12 a date that live in infamy… (Smiles)
However, the comment from Obama’s mouth starting at :30 in the video, is as such: “is there’s some structural issues with our economy. Where, a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. Ya, you see it when you go to a bank an ther, you use uh, an ATM. You don’t go to a bank teller.”
Deregulation allowed banks to participate in all sorts of shenanigans designed to pick the public's pockets so they no longer had to rely these fees. Thus the age of "free checking!" As we all know nothing is truly free and we ended up paying in spades through unscrupulous credit card practices and over-priced mortgages. The old model was far superior to the mess we have today. If clamping down on banks' bad behavior means paying a little more in fees I'm all for it.
And of course bank fees are going up. Banks are businesses, they're in business to make money. If that wasn't their goal, they wouldn't have started. As such, Dodd-Frank severely curtailed their ability to make money from the other avenues they have for a long time. Take from one hand, you have to give to the other, just the way it works. http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2011/09/29/bofas-new-5-debit-card-fee-blame-dodd-frank/ Funny how some people never think about that. Companies don't pay regulations or increased taxes - the customers that use them do. Higher operating costs, whatever their form, translate directly to higher prices for the consumer. And yet there are those that will take legislation like this and praise it, and then in the same breath condemn the companies that wind up raising prices over it....