Fleet-BankBoston Impose New ATM Fee

HARTFORD (AP) — Fleet Bank and BankBoston have begun imposing a fee on non-customers at all of their more than 500 ATMs in Connecticut.

The move follows a state Supreme Court ruling last month that declared the fees legal.

The $1 fee affects all patrons who use the ATMs but do not have an account with Fleet or BankBoston.

This second fee – the so-called ATM surcharge – comes on top of a fee that other banks may charge when their customers use another bank’s ATM. The surcharge is levied at the time of the transaction.

With 518 machines, the merged banks now have 28.7 percent of the ATMs in Connecticut, based on the 1,806 cash machines in the NYCE Corp. network. That share will fall to 24 percent once Fleet-BankBoston divests about 85 ATMs later this year.

Charlotte, N.C.-based First Union National Bank added the surcharge to its roughly 100 Connecticut machines last month. The two largest Connecticut-based banks – People’s and Webster – said they are still trying to determine whether they will impose the surcharge. Another bank, Providence-based Citizens Bank, also said it has not decided.

Jim Schepker, a Fleet spokesman in Hartford, said signs will be posted on ATMs warning of the surcharge, and machines have been programmed to let users cancel transactions to avoid it.

Bankers who support the surcharge say it is reasonable to charge non-customers for convenient access to cash. Non-customers often tend to be frequent users, who withdraw small amounts of cash, and as a result increase machine-maintenance costs.

But consumer advocates say the surcharge is an unfair practice that generated more than $2 billion in nationwide revenue for banks last year.

Part of the fee consumers pay to their own bank when they use another bank’s ATM already goes back to the bank that owns the machine. But that portion, some banks argue, is not enough to help run expansive ATM networks owned by the bigger banks.

Fleet has said it has lost up to $15,000 a day in revenue in Connecticut for each day it has not imposed the non-customer fee. Over three years, the total would have amounted to up to $15.8 million.