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Bank charges the real path to riches!!

Below the fine print from Standard Banks’s latest release of charges for my level of account.

1 Cash withdrawal and prepaid recharges at another bank’s ATM will attract R6,70 plus the AutoBank cash withdrawal fee.

2 Where there is no Standard Bank ATM available in a town or if it is offline, the Standard Bank ATM cash withdrawal fee is applicable. (Nice one our machine is bust so you must pay!)

3 Debit orders to another Standard Bank account and stop orders in favour of personal loan/RCP/WTP/student loans are only charged the base fee of R3,75

4 The minimum monthly service fee will be levied if the total combined transaction fees do not exceed this amount

Now let me be the first to say that I absolutely understand that a business needs to make money, but the seeing these T’s and C’s reminded me of issues that I have, in particular, with bank charges.

First of all they are exorbitant. I will be paying a flat fee of R 199.00 per month plus R 18.50 for my overdraft facility. I have never really looked at these in the past, in terms of choosing a bank, but I am strongly considering that perhaps I need to look around. PS. I cannot remember the last time I saw the inside of a bank.

I transact via Internet banking facilities and I use a cheque once a year to pay for Uncle Paul’s Christmas party. I draw money from an ATM perhaps four to six times a month. The rest of the time I use my credit cards.

The second issue around fees, is the charges when you draw money at another bank’s ATM. I drew R 600.00 the other day from an ABSA ATM. The total fees that I paid for this transaction were R 16.38. What really hacks me off is that the only reason I had to pay this was because the Standard Bank ATM was down (refer point 2 above). Now maybe it is just my bum luck, but in the last year I have had to pay this fine several times, as a result of their machines being down.

The final observation is around point 4, which states..  The minimum monthly service fee will be levied if the total combined transaction fees do not exceed this amount…So my question:why do we not enjoy a rebate should we not transact to the level covered by the minimum fee?

If you are able to charge us should we transact outside of this range surely we as the consumer should be entitled to a rebate should be transact at a lower level. Don’t give the answer that I should change plans to a per transaction plan, you should be able to programmatically work this out, given that you can work out when we exceed the levels, and say: “Hey you actually did not transact to the level specified by your minimum billing, so as a valued client we are not going to bill you to this level” or perhaps my “personal banker” should be contacting me once a year to say “Look I think you need to reconsider your bank charges plan given your transaction profile”

I guess I feel like my bank is not being proactive….hell that not even being reactive. So I issue the challenge, let’s see if there is any response! In the interim the dung ball award is issued, I will retract it something happens, anything!