for 24 December 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Gimme Gimme Gimme Eugen: With all due respect, sir, you're full of shit! Fuck these goddamn blood-sucking leeches at America's financial institutions. This whole ATM mess is absurd. These fuckers are bleeding us dry ... because they can! Shit, I wish the days of "3-3-3" were back! You know what they pay me for interest on my accounts? If I'm lucky, I squeeze 1.75 percent. Jesus! And as far as "the cost of maintaining an ATM" goes, forget about it. Do they cost money to maintain? Yes, absolutely. Are they a technological wonder? Do they generally kick ass? Of course. But each ATM (according to recently published reports) costs approximately US$30,000 to maintain each year. How much do you think they save in salaries? How much in benefits? Sick time? Profit sharing? In fact, these things are the ultimate profit machine — they give their profits to the banks. The banks made the decision to do away with tellers and other "human" services wherever possible. And I agree — the convenience speaks for itself. But fuck the banks and anybody stupid enough to agree with them on this issue. The fucking things save them so much cash it's not even funny. Don't believe me? Well, think back to your precious '80s. How many banks did you find in supermarkets? When I was a little kid, you actually went to a "bank": a big, imposing, free-standing structure with tons of official, serious-looking people doing seriously imposing shit. Now, you stop by on your way to the car with the groceries and talk to one, maybe two individuals. Fuck the banks. They're trying to ride a cash cow and don't like that they're being called out on the carpet. This is their cost of doing business, not mine! And, in fact, the banking industry seems perfectly willing to gloss over the fact that when they first introduced ATMs, they billed them as "cost-saving" devices! How soon they forget. Gary Shust <shustg@oceusa.com> Indeed, banks make money — last year, according to the statistical abstract, they made more than 13 percent return on their equity and a little more than 1 percent on their assets. This is not denied in my piece. But given the numerous ways to avoid paying these ATM fees, I'd say banks' decisions about what to charge for their services ought to be a matter between them and their customers, not city governments. Cordially, Eugen  Hey Eugen, Good stuff. What's your take on adding to military personnel's benefits the honor of not having to pay ATM fees? I tend to be "government: hands off!!!" on my approach to things but feel that saving a poor serviceman the $1.50 charge for using the enemy/ competitor's ATM could go a long way toward making the service a more desirable alternative to, say, college or just getting a regular job. Think about it. Frieda von Pollo <StricFla@aol.com> Indeed, the poor serviceman is key to all sorts of public policy issues, most especially our profligate throwing of our weight around internationally. Let us work to eliminate that job, and then this ATM problem will disappear like the morning mist. Best, Eugen My belief is that, as old constitutional law indicates, corporations, particularly limited monopolies like banks, operate at the sufferance of the people. If they didn't operate in accord with the wishes of the early government of this country, they lost their charter. I realize this isn't the case anymore, but it ought to be. My point with specific regard to banks is, screw them. They make a Titanic profit off the sweat of our brows. They take interest, they take fees, they take stock profits. How much of that do they return to their customers? How much profit do they really need? If there were a legitimate argument that the money that they were taking in profits was stimulating the economy to greater ecstasies of growth and orgies of new jobs and businesses, I'd say cool. The fact of the matter is that banks, like most corporations, make profits when you and I suffer. <fordej@moffitt.usf.edu> I have never looked upon, outside bursts of sudden self-pity, my paying for any service as "suffering" per se, nor do I agree with the notion that people conduct business at the sufferance of the populace. Banks' decades of benefiting from special government privileges was addressed in my piece, and it surely does make one want to see them get theirs. Two wrongs, alas, don't make a right, or so I was taught at my papa's knee. Eugen I read with interest your comments on ATMs. I live in Connecticut, where the state has banned point-of-"sale" ATM fees (the ones you pay to the owner of the ATM). One of the arguments the banks make is that the machines will disappear if the fees are banned. I'm here to tell you (and I'm surprised the news media hasn't picked up on this) that we've got ATMs all over the place. In fact, I see as many machines here as I do in places where the banks charge outrageous ($2.50 plus) fees, such as New Orleans and most of Florida. Furthermore, I've never seen it mentioned, but the banks actually collect in a third way. When you withdraw money from a "foreign" teller machine, the foreign bank treats that as a loan to your bank on which it collects interest, albeit a minuscule amount. There are banks that eschew fees. There are Web sites that show where these are. I for one try very hard to patronize them when I am out of state. Larry Davis <rldavis@charger.newhaven.edu> Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Indeed, banks won't necessarily get out of the ATM business without the fees. Which doesn't shed any light on the wisdom or propriety of government deciding what fees a company can charge. More customers should take your approach. Eugen Eugen, Perhaps I'm missing something due to my continued residency in the Canadian wilds, perhaps I'm not. Either way, let me know if I've got this right: You are arguing that banks are justified in levying service charges and our objections to them derive from a false sense of entitlement? Specious, my good man. Specious. The cost to install and maintain ATMs was borne out (in Canada at least) in the massive downsizing visited upon banks' workforces. Moreover, they use ATMs only because they are a cheaper method of delivering the same service. If you want other examples, just look at a Ford assembly line. Am I counterarguing that ATMs do not have an overhead? No, just that offsets exist where the cost of maintaining an ATM is considered. Banks saw the opportunity to capitalize on customer behavior and now charge an equal or greater amount than the hourly wage of a teller. In other words, not only are they not paying that wage, they are making a more than 100 percent return on the cut. Subtract the electricity used to power it, the depreciated value of the thing, as well as the Wells Fargo dudes who spirit the money away (or reload it), and the cost per ATM is minimal. That's just the easy economics of it. The real kick in the ass comes from the fact that we give our money to banks, which give us no return in the form of interest (at last check, my savings account was providing me with .75 percent, and my checking account .01 percent — no, I'm not joking. I get a penny per hundred dollars in my checking account, and 75 cents in my savings). As the Barenaked Ladies sing, "if I had a million dollars," I could barely live off the interest (single malts are expensive, you know). Yet banks this money and aggressively invest in all manner of endeavors for their own profit. Their investment schemes with my money benefit their shareholders, not me. Perversely enough, I can live with that. What I cannot live with is banks filling their coffers just a little more by circumscribing my choices even further. They took away tellers, loaded up the city with ATMs, then charged me when I didn't have a choice as to where I could do my banking. Thus, my real beef comes from a point of logic. How can they justify charges to me when 1) the alternative they provide suits them better, and 2) they already use my money to increase their profit margin? Then they turn around and use cost as a justification for why they charge to use the ATMs. Fine, it does cost money to run these things, I have already acknowledged that. I'll gladly pay one cent more than the real cost of using an ATM. On a per-use basis, the cost to me would be, what — three, maybe four cents a pop. I do not have a false sense of entitlement, at least not about this issue (do not talk to me about what I should be earning yearly). I do have a sense about fair value for service rendered. Fair exchange is all they are entitled to. Yours, Will Murray <murray_29@hotmail.com> Yes, I understand you feel banks are making too much money. It's quite easy to avoid letting them make that little extra off foreign-bank ATM fees, by the way. I'll leave the solution as an exercise for the reader, just like Encyclopedia Brown. Don't peek in the back! Best, Eugen Hit & Run Sucksters: Re: Your recent piece on the all-girl band, Rockbitch A few remarks regarding some of your more salient points: * Forget Meatloaf or Menudo — Rockbitch is a reaction against The Spice Girls * Lubricity, well, OK ... but what about safe sex? Is this a band with a bisexual death wish? * Rockbitch sez that its performances are a "protest against an industry that uses sex as hype but never follows through." Right. And I suppose that advertised foursomes and sex onstage do nothing to increase publicity or record sales. * They probably need a work visa to perform in Canada, Britz or not. Noel Carisse, Esq. Ottawa, Canada Just like a lawyer to use bullet points to clarify his argument. And just like a Canadian to be from Ottawa. You crazy Canadians just never quit, do you? You sneaky bastards. Unlubricated, hyped, and sexless, Sucksters Re: Tony Robbins I like stupid Web pages, thanks. It's really too bad you failed. How do I know? If you went to Tony's seminar and were a success, you wouldn't have time to be making stupid Web pages about him. Rick Smith <byter80@hotmail.com> I don't know, man. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was just so pointlessly zany. And did you see Uma in the movie? Hell. He's a lucky guy, though. That Susan Sarandon sure is something else. Anyway, if I were a success, I wouldn't have time to do a lot of things. Which is why I prefer not to be a success. Failure never tasted so sweet, Suckster #3 Suckdot Way to go, Suck! All six of your hard-core Net-head readers must have been peeing themselves over your rapierlike parody of Slashdot. One question: What the hell is Slashdot? Really, nobody cares about this crap. We want the goofy essays that run down the center of the page, and don't scrimp on the Canadian crack-smoking rabbit. I can devote about five minutes a day to Suck, which is more than enough. Suckdot is far too great a commitment. <rsmiley@ idun.com> You have our apologies, Russ, for asking you to commit more than five minutes of your life to something as tedious as Suck. By way of making it up to you, a check is in the mail — just a small gesture of our regret. the Sucksters That is the funniest, most esoteric thing I've read in a long, long time. Big props to you. <David.Ritchie@tradenz.govt.nz> Thanks, David. Watch upcoming issues for Suck's wacky, hilarious parodies of English literary journals, entomological societies, and the mating habits of burrowing rodents. the Sucksters |
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