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Comment by jameskilton | Hacker News Reader

But, there's always been a fee for using the ATM of a bank you're not a member of.

Feels like FUD to me.

Coming from a small European country, it's one of those things that you think it's really weird about countries like United States. Here you can withdraw money without paying anything from any ATM. I never even saw a ATM asking for a fee.

When I went to NYC it wasn't easy to find ATMs without fees (and then there was the problem of my card being part of the Maestro network which isn't available everywhere).

It is because <small European country> only has one bank? ;-)

In Spain these charges are quite common too, but are grouped into competing ATM networks: servired, telebanco and 4B being the main ones.

Not really, I guess it really varies. I'm from the other side of the border, Portugal, the banks are pretty much the same as in Spain (well, they are almost all Spanish by now).

In my small European country (Romania) fees at other bank's ATMs came with the ATMs 20 years ago. I guess it varies.

On the other hand, the few times I've been to the EU, it wasn't easy to find public restrooms without fees :) In the US, I've never seen a public restroom that charged.

(Actually I saw one, at a tourist destination in Martha's Vineyard, that had a suggested donation. I was flabbergasted.)

That's very true! The trick is to enter a cafe and ask for a bottle of water while taking the chance to ask "oh, by the way, where's the restroom?"

Ah, similar to how one gets "free" WiFi in the States by ordering some coffee from a Starbucks :) I am touring Europe in a couple months and will keep this in mind, thanks!

I'd say it's the same logic but usually a bottle of water in Europe is much cheaper than any coffee from Starbucks. :)

That depends on the country. It used to be that in Germany you would pay a person whoes job it was to keep the toilets clean and nice.

I asked my friend, a native German, about that last summer when I was in Germany.

She said a lot of times that money does not even go to the person cleaning the toilets.

I did pay 1 euro to use a bathroom in a train station. It seemed to be similar to US truck stop bathroom/showers. As soon as I left they cleaned the bathroom.

Sure, but $5 is more than double the standard fee in my experience.

I think the significance lies not in "oh no, it costs more now!" but in the fact that banks are beginning to add more and more fees to make a profit - doesn't this suggest they're hurting elsewhere, and are turning to what could be considered some pretty desperate measures to come up with money?

The article suggests that they're pissed off that congress is considering limiting their overage fees (which IMO are purely predatory/opportunistic, no way an overage actually costs the bank 150 bucks, I could be wrong though).

So they're retaliating by saying "yeah, well we're just gonna stick it to you another way, then". Emotionally-driven economics at work.

I mean, it's not like they could actually make the system more efficient. Less people to manage, harder to justify your big paycheck for managing a simple and efficient system.

Not necessarily, a corporation always is looking for ways to grow its profits, preferably through easier methods, rather than more difficult methods. That doesn't mean they're necessarily hurting in other revenue streams.

I met someone who once worked for Proctor & Gamble in marketing. He told a story of how they had a goal to increase a certain fabric softener's revenue by a million dollars in 1 year for a certain market. They looked at the stats and discovered that a certain percentage of customers always came back to purchase due to brand loyalty.

Then they did some more research and redesigned the fabric softener bottle's cap and spout. You normally pour the fabric softener into the cap, and then into the laundry machine, right? So they made 2 changes. First, they made the cap a touch wider and the line a bit higher. This way, customers thought they strangely weren't putting in as much fabric softener as normal, so they would pour in more. Second, they made the spout easy to overdose fabric softener accidentally. In market tests, customer test groups said that the spout made it so much easier to pour. So they released the product and marketed it as having the new easy-pour spout. It guaranteed faster usage, and therefore faster repurchase rates from loyal customers. Bam. They made their numbers and increased the stock price that little bit more.

Raising the ATM fees seems like a terrible way to raise money, from a marketing perspective. The softener example made customers happier with their selected brand; this seems like it would anger customers.

As another anecdote, last night I almost didn't withdraw cash because the fee was $2, instead of $1.50. If it were $5, I definitely would have walked the two and a half blocks to my "home" ATM.

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