{"id":158,"date":"2007-06-22T06:01:45","date_gmt":"2007-06-22T10:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lucas-photo.com\/blog\/?p=158"},"modified":"2009-07-24T11:18:30","modified_gmt":"2009-07-24T15:18:30","slug":"atm-at-8-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/22\/atm-at-8-am\/","title":{"rendered":"ATM at 8 A.M."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is it just me, or are the remote ATM charges spinning even further out of control?<\/p>\n<p>Last one I saw was $3.50, not counting what my own bank would charge me.  Since we&#8217;ve allowed the definition of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Usury\" target=\"_blank\">usury<\/a> to be inflated beyond any practical use, technically it&#8217;s even legal.  <\/p>\n<p>The worst part is when they ask you if it&#8217;s all right to charge you.  Often people needing cash don&#8217;t have the option of saying &#8220;no&#8221; at that point&#8211; they&#8217;ve bought groceries, or perhaps found themselves short of cash after a purchase or hotel stay, and their native ATM isn&#8217;t accessible.  <\/p>\n<p>But why do they only give you two options?  You know some bean-counter is taking this to senior management to justify the fees.  &#8220;See, boss, 99% of the people approve of the fee!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I think that if the menu option read like this:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"border: 1px solid grey; color: grey; background: black; padding-right: 12px;\"><p>\nLeech America Bank will deduct a $3.50 service charge from your account.  This is in addition to any fees your institution may charge you.  Do you agree?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Yes, proceed.  I understand that a $3.50 service charge will be deducted from my account.<\/li>\n<li>No, cancel my transaction.<\/li>\n<li>Hell no.  Give me my money, you bloodsucking vultures, and stuff your &#8220;service charge&#8221; into any orifice that causes you pain.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>there would be a much more accurate accounting of how people <strong>really<\/strong> feel about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is it just me, or are the remote ATM charges spinning even further out of control? Last one I saw was $3.50, not counting what my own bank would charge me. Since we&#8217;ve allowed the definition of usury to be inflated beyond any practical use, technically it&#8217;s even legal. The worst part is when they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best","category-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}