Friday, April 07, 2006

Innovation in Hidden Charges

The following article appeared in The Australian Financial Review today (7th April 2006, p80):

"Banks are charging up to $2 for cancelled EFTPOS and ATM transactions and are even billing conusmers if they put in the wrong PIN, the Australian Consumers Association said yesterday.

Senior finance policy office Nick Coates said the charge represented a new low. "It illustrates the upward creep of retail banking fees and a creative development in the innoviation of hidden charges" he says in an upcoming issue of Consuming Interest.

No comment.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks Jon for giving us in the UK a foretaste of what is to come. This week the UK's Office of Fair Trading (OFT) announced that Credit Card penalties greater than £12 were considered unfair (e.g. late payment). Actually, it wasn't the OFT that had campaigned for the consumer, rather a consumer himself had taken his credit card company to court, but of course these regulatory bodies don't like to be seen to be slow off the mark!

The OFT also said that similar excessive charges by banks would also be deemed unfair. Banks typically charge £30 an occurence. Banks are said to make over £500m p.a. from charging over 7.5m consumers.

See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4878798.stm