At the start of September I applauded rediATM for being, what I considered front runners, by not following the crowd and issuing a $2.00 fee to customers using their ATM network throughout Australia. You can imagine my disappointment when only a month later, I used the rediATM in front of Woolworths at the Upper Coomera City Centre and I was charged $2.00 for my time.
I have no idea what it costs rediATM to provide their ATM network throughout Australia, however I get the impression that it has absolutely no bearing on the $2.00 fee they charge. It isn’t an coincidence that nearly every ATM provider charges $2.00 for the service – it is a small amount of money that consumers hate having to pay but tolerate because it seems as though it is an inconsequential amount of money. This is the how the banks make literally hundreds of millions of dollars annually, charging lots of small fees which seem innocuous on their own, collectively annoying but still small enough that it begrudgingly dismissed.
For no other reason than I had a good feeling about rediATM until now, I would have used their ATM in front of Woolworths and ‘happily’ copped the existing $1.75 on the chin but felt good about it because they weren’t being a lemming.
Now that rediATM have increased their ATM to $2.00 like everyone else, I’ll make a point of not using it and get money out when purchasing at Woolworths.
This might have something to do with their recently announced deal with the NAB. NAB customers will no longer be hit with these fees using a rediATM teller.
I heard about that and was thinking at the time, nothing quite like increasing their fees to compensate for allowing NAB customers free access.