[DTA]

>>>>>>For starters, banks don’t normally charge customers fees for withdrawing money from their own accounts. They never have. So I don’t know what Layton is talking about. <<<<<<

I do not like Layton but I do not like people who falsify the facts. I wonder in what country TOM BRODBECK lives in. If he lives in Canada, and has a chequing account with ATM privilege in one of Big Four banks he does pay for each withdrawal on ATM machine, even when he uses his own bank. He is either not checking his bank statements or he deliberatelly mislead the public/ Banks should hire someone who is little bit smarter.

Bank will not charge monthly fee account monthly fee if account holder has certain amount of money deposited all the time on the account (but they pay minimum interest on that amount of money, many people do not realise that). If one want to avoid paying for each ATM transaction, one has to subscribe to upgraded service that are not free. Banks are not making $400M on ATM out of thin air.

The fact is that today one can talk for hours with China or Russia for $1.00. Use of computer networks for transaction is a fraction of a penny.

The privilege to charge $1.50 or $3.50 overseas is no different than airport payphone traps charging $10 a minute for overseas calls -it's a rip-off.

And those who say that banks use their equipment to service us, what's about us working for a bank as teller clerks to get our own money? Or being charged for a "privilege" to use our own premises, our own hydro, own own computer equipment, our own internet connection and our own manpower to do transactions that bank is supposed to pay tellers to do the service for us?

The shoddy, unclean premises of many banks, resembling welfare offices, incompetent tellers with no command of English do drive people to do their banking business from home.

This is what this rip-off is all about. Layton is stupid because he did not address the real isue - rip off charges in the information age.

[GMMAC]

As we're talking about accuracy, where do you get "...in one of Big Four banks .." ?
Proposed future mergers aside, that's not an accurate count of those generally considered to be Canada's principal Chartered Banks.

According to Raymond J. Protti, President and Chief Executive Officer of the 40+ member CBA:
"Banks make significant investments in their own ABM networks to meet the needs of their customers. They allow non-customers to get cash from their machines but it is done as a convenience. And a fee is charged so that bank’s customers are not subsidizing the use of those machines by customers of other banks.
“It’s like saying to clients of a gym; we’re going to let customers of other gyms in to use the weight room. We’re not going to charge them, and you’ll be subsidizing their use of it,” said Mr. Protti.
It is important to remember that clients who use their own bank’s machines, as they often do, do not pay a convenience fee at all."
Excerpted from: Canadian Bankers Association News Release ~ January 25, 2007

Personally, I avoid both the the Banks' service charges &, more importantly, the Krupp-like nonsense of several such as the 'green' TD giving big time money to far-left enviro-wackos & the RBC being arguably the most lavish nongovernmental funder of militant homosexuals in the nation by dealing exclusively with a Catholic Credit Union.