Thursday, February 10, 2005
Unbelievable Greed
Sport Guy: Would you believe me if I told you that the city of Jacksonville (Florida, US, and site of the 2005 super bowl) changed all the ATMs (excluding the ones in actual banks) so that A) it costs $5.00 for every ATM transaction fee, and B) you can only take out $100 at a time, and nothing more than that? Well, it's true. In other words, if you want to take out $300, it costs you an extra $15. Great city. Don’t give Nairobi Mayor Waithika any more bad ideas
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3 comments:
Make's sense to charge more for ATM transactions during such a huge event. It reduces the possibility that you will have a street stampede fueled by cheap liquor and beer and also brings in a tidy sum for the city. After all, the idea is to make money. We may need to do the same when the Olympics comes to Kenya cause its the only way we will even come close to breaking even :)
But they didn't have to set a $5 fee for each $100 - why not charge $5 for each transaction, regardless of whether 100 or 1,000 was withdrawn? $5 is a high enough fee compared to the $2 that non-bank ATM's typically charge. At this rate, a gambler withdrawing $5,000 would pay $250 to the city!
Absolutely. However it is also not only $5 it could be as high as $7, because on the back-end, your own bank may levy some additional charges, as high as $2 for withdrawing money from a non bank atm. The idea here is to make the most of a captive atm user who needs money over the weekend and is potentially not sober enough to realise the hidden costs. State and city officials levy all sorts of fees during such activities. They would (or claim to) use such fees for stuff like policing during the games or in the case of Jacksonville, I hope they use it to clean the city. It stinks to high heaven. Stuffing hidden fees has been perfected to an art here in the US. I bet they called it an ATM discretinary fee or something. ATM transactions are limited to $500 in most cases. So $25 would be the highest fee possible.
Gamblers on the other hand generally don't carry cash like that except for small amounts. They open lines of credit with the casino and/or use credit cards. The city on the other hand finds a way to grab the loot from there too. Last time I was in Atlantic city, winnings over $500 were not disbursed in cash.
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