Never mind gas prices, here come the ATM fee hikes!

Folks, never mind federal investigations into the price of gas, how about an investigation into the outrageous prices banks charge for using someone else's ATM? It was bad enough at $2.00 but now Wells Fargo is apparently leading the charge with a hike to $2.50 - expect all the other banks to follow in short order. Basically this is easy money for them, like $0.20 per text message for the phone companies. They could make it $5.00 and people would still be paying it because when you absolutely have to have cash what alternative is there?

I'm sure banks look at cash as a competitor to credit cards so whatever percentage they get for a credit card transaction should guide their pricing on cash withdrawals. If fees are too low they will canabilize their credit card fee income - which as we all know is at least 2% and probable more like 3 or 4%. So if the average person sucks out $100 per ATM withdrawal then they need to charge $2, $3 or more per transaction to avoid hurting their credit card fees.

But this is really just BS, why are there no federal investigations into how banks can justify these fees? Their usual excuse is "well we have to cover the fees other banks charge us" but guess what those fees are just made up, one bank just charges other banks what they charge them. It doesn't reflect anywhere against the actual cost of providing ATMs. In fact it is well known that ATMs save banks money because they allow them to have fewer branches and fewer staff. We know this for a fact because it is is why banks have checking accounts that are cheaper if you don't use branches to do your transactions.