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August 14, 2002
Willow Glen, California Since 1992 |
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Give 'em an inch and they'll take your slushy, too
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Deborah Taylor-Hollis
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 Early in the 1980s a new fandangled mechanism
called the ATM came into the world.
Back in those days—before electronic
transfers were available to anyone but Swiss
bank account holders—you had to make sure
you had your money before the pesky banks
closed for the weekend at 5 p.m. on the dot.
There were no banks open on Saturdays and
Sundays.
It was a world where anyone trying to get
night or weekend cash had to make friends
with a liquor store guy or a high school
dropout friend who worked the graveyard shift
at a 7-Eleven, which was also the place a
person usually spent as much time as needed
on sundries and an Icee, even at 4 a.m
During those years you didn't leave for the
weekend without travelers checks, because
being more than 10 miles from your home bank
made you seem suspicious to those banking
folks.
My California-born and -bred bank—seeking
new ways to help customers and save money as
deregulation burst the industry wide
open—took the first steps toward installing
ATMs in several local branches around town.
The bank pitched them as the wave of the
future.
Since each machine replaced the work of at
least one teller, which would save thousands
of dollars a year, the bank promised that
these new machines would be free to customers
forever.
Those machines were truly free for about 15
seconds back when the world still believed
that auditors would stay true to their
calling, absent governmental regulators
breathing down their necks.
My bank was founded the day after the 1906
San Francisco earthquake, when other banks
refused to give the little people loans to
rebuild their homes and get back on their
feet. The founder built an empire being
George Bailey to a city full of Potters, and
his company flourished.
But ATMs changed the "good neighbor" banking
philosophy.
Relying on ATMs in the early years—around
1988—made for sketchy weekends. Customers
needing cash were often met with signs that
read "machine down" or "out of money" from
location to location.
Randomly assigned PINs, which were difficult
to remember, made it hard to access one's own
money, and reading those early screens was a
nightmare. The machines were also devoid of
security, making parking and getting out to
access cash on Saturday nights a mugger's
delight.
And those innocent promises of free service,
easy access and trying to help the customer
all went out the window.
Banks tried to keep customers from using a
competitor's ATM by charging, and so for a
while, if you used any machine that was not
'yours,' it would cost you at the 'foreign'
machine, and 'your' bank would also charge
you when it got the transfer information.
Jeez ... thanks a lot.
Then a few in the banking industry started
cutting out the free part altogether. Some
banks started charging if you wanted to go
inside, and others started charging if you
wanted to use the machine.
Now banks already saved quite a lot of money
when they put that machine in—replacing
teller salaries and benefits—and they were
also raking it in from every sap who went to
the wall instead of waiting in line.
But the charges just kept coming, even as
banks closed branch offices and cut back on
staff. Most monthly checking account charges
continued to rise, from $3 to $4 to $7 to $8
to $11 a month. Just so we could use our own
money.
Asking a screen to show a customer's account
history cost on some machines, and using
machines out of state also cost a bundle.
Now banks want to advertise to you while you
are forced to wait for their machines to
cough up your cash.
How charming that we have come to this.
But fortunately, you can go down to the 7-11
and make friends with someone working the graveyard shift so she
can cash a check for you at 2 a.m.
Order me a large cherry Slurpee while you're
there, huh?
Deborah can be reached at dthollis@svcn.com.
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