They made withdrawing money from the bank so very convenient. One could visit an ATM almost anywhere, put in a card and could get enough money to buy a pizza or put a down payment on a home theatre system.
But that’s a thing of the past now. It started with a few banks and now every bank is following this. THIS: being charging a fee to withdraw money from the ATM (Automated Theft Machine), if you do not have an account with that bank.
Most banks now charge a 2 AED surcharge, for every withdrawal, which is a steep fee especially when you are only trying to withdraw 50 AED. (anything above that would put you in overdraft)
When asked, the banks responded that they have tried to make the ATM’s much safer for us. They have installed fancy lights, security cameras and air purifiers, (wonder what that smell is?) After all they are just looking out for us, they don’t want anyone else robbing us.
They also tell us that installing ATM’s are expensive, they cost more than $ 100,000 and that does not even include the money inside.
I feel it would be cheaper to put a human in a box. Hmm.. there might be a law against that, and then again, humans are prone to mistakes and they are also prone to running away to the moon with all that money from inside.
This surcharge as it is called allows banks to install ATMs in many convenient places, like malls, gas stations, airports and more malls.
But all this is very inconvenient for people like me. With my kind of luck, you end up living on a neighbourhood with 2 dozen ATM’s, all of which want to swindle me out of 2 AED every time I visit them. That amount might not be much for those banks, but it means a whole meal to me.
Besides, it’s against my principles to pay a bank to give me MY money. I just won’t do it, unless I’m stuck somewhere with no money, no Visa and no mother.
What irks many people, including me, is the way the banks got us hooked over ATMs. They gave us free ATM, got us addicted and then decided to reel in our money.
For some reason, when they were launching these machines and new age technology, bankers didn’t complain much about the cost of installing ATMs. Perhaps they were too busy explaining to shareholders how the machines would replace tellers and save money.
I can imagine, at the introduction of the first ever ATM, the banker probably gave a speech, “Here’s a new machine that give out cash without wasting time on small talk and that doesn’t require health insurance and minimum wage. It has no bad habits like smoking, swearing or asking for raises. It cannot be threatened with a gun and will never sue us for harassments. One day, this machine will be able to greet people through the video display, process their transactions quickly and take them to the cleaners.”
That was it, we were sucked in.
And that’s why today we have machines that display this message when we withdraw our own money from the ATM :
“Please withdraw only half as much as you can afford, because we’re taking the other half.”
Article by Neha Mistry
