
Rural America Turning to Grocers, High-Fee ATMs as Banks Leave - JumpCrisscross
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-21/rural-america-turning-to-grocers-high-fee-atms-as-banks-leave
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ebg13
I can't remember the last time I paid an ATM fee, because for many years I've
had an account that reimburses them. If you're here and you still pay fees
because you didn't know you had a choice, now you know.

~~~
technofiend
Same here but there's incentive to not waste money on fees as my bank also
pays a small dividend each year. My workaround was to get cash back when
buying groceries but Kroger recently added fees to cash back on purchases!

The Family Dollar has NO CASH BACK!! signs on every terminal because like
Kroger they must have discovered razor thin margins aren't sufficient to cover
transaction fees. For the same reason the city in the article may discover
Dollar Tree has the same attitude about cash back transactions.

Short of government incentives there is no reason for a savings and loan to
remain in a small unprofitable town and outside of North Dakota there are no
government-owned banks. As much a it goes against the political climate these
days you probably do need government regulation and incentives to keep banking
accessible to these towns.

~~~
beatgammit
What banking services do these people need? Most banks offer mobile check
deposit, and many offer a wide network of fee-free ATMs. Most of these ATMs
don't take deposits, so that may be an issue for those who need it.

I use Ally Bank and they offer $10 reimbursement for ATM fees every month
_and_ they have a wide network of fee-free ATMs (at most 7-11s and a few other
common stores). If you look harder, you can find accounts without any limits
(e.g. Charles Schwab), and many credit unions support deposits in co-op ATMs
(probably not helpful if there aren't any in rural towns). The only reason I
go to banks is to withdraw cash in specific denominations for paying our baby
sitter, but you can usually get the same thing if you ask nicely at a grocery
store.

I don't see much of a reason why people need physical banks anymore.
Withdrawals can happen with an ATM, deposits can happen in mobile or mail, and
loans are increasingly available online. The only thing I can think of is
business owners needing to make deposits and withdrawals frequently.

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fyfy18
On a recent trip to the US (San Francisco), I was surprised by how much ATMs
charge. The ATM in my hotel was the lowest I found, charging only $4. Compare
this to Europe where in most countries ATMs do not have a fee (small
convenience stores are often the exception), and you can use the ATM of a
competitor bank without incurring extra fees.

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elfexec
> On a recent trip to the US (San Francisco), I was surprised by how much ATMs
> charge. The ATM in my hotel was the lowest I found, charging only $4

If you use your bank's ATM, they won't charge you a fee ( aka waive the fee ).
If you use another bank's ATM or a non-bank ATM, then it's highway robbery. So
the only time I ever use an ATM is if it had my bank's logo on it.

> Compare this to Europe where in most countries ATMs do not have a fee

Wow. Does this apply even if you use another bank's ATM?

~~~
hocuspocus
> Wow. Does this apply even if you use another bank's ATM?

It varies but typically ATMs prefer charging the card issuer rather than the
customer. So if you're using a bank that doesn't charge when you withdraw
money out of its network, then it's essentially free. That's very common with
online banks.

~~~
beatgammit
The same is true in the US. Ally Bank automatically reimburses fees up to
$10/month, and Charles Schwab reimburses without any limit. Each back
obviously has its own network and policies for out of network withdrawals, but
I can't remember the last time I actually paid an ATM fee (I use Ally Bank).

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BrandoElFollito
My last visit to a bank was 8 years ago. I do all my banking online and if I
have a problem I write an email (and sometimes call).

The fact that one wants to pay for bank services and agrees on a bank to force
them to come (vs having mechanisms for remote access) is something I do not
understand.

There is a population which does not have access to Internet, or is computer
illiterate. The efforts should go into helping them to learn and legally force
banks to make online banking easy.

~~~
scarface74
This is the answer. Who needs a large amount of cash if you’re computer (or
phone) literate? Do all of your banking online and use something like CashApp
for the rare person to person transfers.

I think it’s fear of the unknown for many.

~~~
lunaticlabs
There are many, but here is a personal anecdote. For background, I am a
relatively high income software professional. Many years ago, I moved states,
and in the process had to switch banks, so I closed my old account before
moving.

Somewhere there was an automatic debit on one my bills for 30-50 US bucks that
my bank paid, but since my account was already closed, it basically went into
default. When I tried to open a bank account in my new state, I was denied.

It ends up there’s something like the credit reporting agencies, but for
banks, and because of my $50 dollar accidental default, I ended up on this
system. There are almost no consumer protections on it, so I couldn’t contest
it, and I didn’t have any way to pay it or get it removed.

The end result is that I was unable to open a bank account for the next 5
years without a co-signer, even though my credit score was in the 700s and I
had a six figure income. I was able to get credit cards, but couldn’t easily
pay the bill without an account to write checks from. I had to go to check
cashing places to get money orders (most banks won’t give you money orders or
cashiers checks without an account), I had to cash my paychecks at the one
office my employers bank had in town, and I could only receive checks for
banks I could travel to. When I rented my apartment, I paid the security
deposit in cash, but then had to drive around town when I got it back after
moving out to try and find a branch of my landlords bank while I was on my way
out of town. It was a nightmare.

There’s a whole system I fell into that I wasn’t even aware existed until that
happened to me, and I consider myself a highly educated consumer compared to
your average person. There are plenty of reasons to want cash in our society,
even if you are not doing anything illicit or that you want to keep hidden.
If, for any reason, banks are not available to you, life gets very difficult
very quickly.

~~~
scarface74
I still don’t see that as a reason for wanting cash - that’s a reason for
wanting both laws to make the banking system act more like the credit system
with more consumer recourse and “postal banking”. They could go as far as
denying access to paper checks and being able to opt out of letting banks get
you into overdraft situations by denying all payments that would result in
overdraft.

Also, you should be able to decide which order payments go in - highest first
or lowest first. Highest first can easily result in 4 small overdrafts instead
of 1 large overdraft.

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bediger4000
Welp, I've reached my free article limit from Bloomberg, so I'm working off
the title alone.

Last year a spate of articles appeared about how grocery stores had bailed out
of small-town/rural America, leaving maybe a Dollar General or something. For
years, we've heard about telecom monopolies providing less than realistic
service to small-town/rural America. Remember all the hand-wringing over a
"digital divide"?

1\. Isn't this just market forces at work? Since we're all free market
fundamentalists, why does this bother us? 2\. This is the result of
deregulation, unchecked consolidation, and the populace migrating to cities.
Monopolies, or even firms with a lot of monopoly power in oligopolistic
markets don't have to meet every need, they just need to keep turning what
they consider as an obscene profit. This strikes me as a 2nd order effect of
allowing banks to consolidate. 3\. Small and medium towns are losing
population as well, and may be on the bubble for this sort of thing as well.
4\. There's certainly an outsized amount of hand-wringing over the fate of
rural America. I'm going to guess that there are urban areas with vastly
greater population, that have much the same problems. Don't we usually agree
that 15% of Americans are un-banked? This seems like an "electoral college"
for concern about rural Americans.

~~~
pasttense01
Free article limit? Anyone can get around these limits. For example by
blocking certain types of javascript--with something like the advanced mode of
Ublock Origin.

As for my situation I live in a town of 300 people--with a bank branch but no
ATMs anywhere.

