College students may soon be free of additional fees when making transactions on ATMs throughout campus if local researchers have their way.

Representatives of three branches of the New York Public Interest Group released a report Thursday, revealing their research on recent bank practices, increasing ATM and debit card fees and how people can avoid them.

‘In this troubled economy, while many people are suffering to thrive, banks have actually been profiting by making the burden even worse on consumers,’ said Shawn McConnell, project coordinator of NYPIRG at The State University of New York at Oswego.

McConnell described three ways in which banks have profited from ATM and debit card fees: The banks raise the existing fees, invent new fees and make it difficult for consumers to avoid fees.

‘Banks give the rationale that fees cover the cost of running the machines off-site from the banks, but it only costs 25 cents to use a machine, compared to $2.50 for a teller transaction,’ McConnell said.

Sean Vormwald, NYPIRG project coordinator for Syracuse University and The State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, explained five main findings of NYPIRG’s report on its research.

One finding is that banks charge consumers two fees, a foreign fee and an ATM surcharge fee for using an ATM owned by a bank other than their own. Researchers found that the average ATM surcharge is $1.58 and the average withdrawal fee is $1.21.

Another of the report’s findings is that half of the banks researched assess a fee of an average of 86 cents for debit card purchases, and a third is that bigger banks lure frustrated customers to set up an account with them by promising no ATM fees. But because bigger banks tend to have bigger surcharge fees, consumers may actually pay more and smaller banks lose business in the meantime, Vormwald said.

Along with the previous two fees, non-bank ATM owners charge an additional fee for use of their machines, Vormwald said. College students are especially affected by increasing ATM fees because they cannot easily move off campus to seek out machines with lower fees, he added.

‘I’m kind of stuck in my situation,’ said Jeffrey Scott, project leader for consumer rights at SUNY-Oswego and an Oswego student. ‘I have to use the ATM in the student union because it’s very inconvenient to get to any off campus. I probably should be doing my homework instead of traveling around looking for the best bank.’

Vormwald added that college students cannot afford to pay fees for withdrawing their own money.

‘Students tend to be low-income, paying for tuition, housing and bills,’ he said. ‘There’s not a lot of extra money.’

Alanna Gothard, NYPIRG project coordinator of SUNY-Cortland, said that students can fight the bank fees by complaining to their banks, using ATMs with the lowest fees, withdrawing more money per transaction and by writing to legislators to pass bills that will ban the fees.

‘We’ve been monitoring the bank fees since 1997 and the average has increased every year,’ Vormwald said. ‘A piece of legislation has been introduced to prohibit ATM surcharges on SUNY and CNY campuses, so hopefully that’ll change it.’

Published on April 10, 2003 at 12:00 pm