Comment on Commonwealth Bank to charge customers $3 'withdrawal fee' to access their own cash
Nath@aussie.zone 4 weeks agoEven if it is only under certain circumstances, charging customers to access money is appalling behaviour. Once upon a time, banks paid us to keep our money in their establishment. Now that our society has evolved to the point where we literally can’t function without a bank account somewhere, the banks treat us like they don’t need us.
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I’d rather not defend banks, but it appears the fee only applies when staff are involved. Withdrawing at an ATM or EFTPOS at checkout seem to remain free.
They should be legally required to provide free assisted withdrawals for seniors, the disabled, and post office withdrawals when an ATM is not within a few km’s, but I don’t think it’d be an issue for everyone else.
Personally I don’t care about this, however I think most bank fees should be illegal, period; especially insufficient balance and all generic monthly fees. Nowadays most of these things are fully-automated, and I’d bet the cost of maintaining an inactive or low activity account are near-zero; the fees are just a tax on the poor, financially illiterate, and busy.
MutilationWave@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
For anyone who doesn’t know, you can go into your bank account settings and disable “Overdraft Protection”. Once you do this, your transaction will be declined if there are insufficient funds instead of overdrafting your account and charging you $30 or whatever it is now.