I know what you mean ... that's mostly the case here as well, however, the bank I use is a small, family owned bank, although it has been expanding a bit over the last few years. Many people have been banking with them for decades, some through two or three family generations. I've had my accounts with them for about 20 years. Almost unheard of these days ;-))
Speaking of transaction charges, this bank refunds any transaction charges incurred by using "foreign" ATM/Cash machines as long as you have a balance of over $750.00 in the account you used to make the transaction. There are no fees to use their own machines. Shel > [Original Message] > From: David Mann > > On Feb 2, 2006, at 8:47 AM, Shel Belinkoff wrote: > > > No lines to speak of, service charges are non-existent for my type of > > transactions, nobody blocking the sidewalk, and a friendly staff. > > In these parts that kind of service has been unheard of since the > 80s. Once they hooked us on electronic transactions they started > closing branches (most small towns don't even have a bank anymore). > When we were _really_ hooked they introduced transaction charges. > Now they charge you for everything under the sun unless you have a > mortgage with them. Some over-the-counter transactions carry some > pretty hefty fees, and the staff are actually under pressure to sell > you more services. This makes the whole experience very unpleasant. > > I think most of our banks are Australian owned and I'm surprised that > Rob mentioned Java. The two banks I use have plain old HTML with > Javascript. One bank's site is extremely irritating because it > resizes my browser window to what it assumes is full-screen. I > complained but didn't get much of a response.
