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In Response To:
Thread Starter: Anonymous
Title: Re: Tax Refund Checks-charging fees to cash?

Originally Posted By: girlsrope2
Are you kidding me? I am in full support of your bank charging that fee.


Amen Brother or Sister! And Dear OP, I see your $150 and raise you to 10%! Our state (anonymous!) allows ten bucks or ten percent whichever is greater. I want to start that now.

Financial institutions can offer a check-cashing service without having to compete on amounts or fees with MSBs or Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is going to stomp all banks on all fees, so matching their rates won’t be possible in the foreseeable future. They don’t get expensive until they eliminate their competition.

If the check holder had a relationship with an MSB, they would be at that MSB instead of standing in our lobby. No, they came to our institution, and said, “I’d like to cash this check.” What possible reason could we have for refusing that request? The only reason is the risk that the check will be returned unpaid….and with Treasury checks, that could happen years later, or so I’m told.

So in order to perform this very high-risk service, we should demand a high reward. Every single customer will be offered the chance to deposit the check into a new, FREE, checking account (with no fees, not even overdraft fees, thanks to the regulators), and then of course they would have to wait until the new account hold expires. Or at the very least, until the next day for the first $5,000, if it is a cashier’s check. But I think that many of them will choose to pay our “convenience fee,” for the convenience of walking out the door with 90% of their cash in hand instantly, and not having to wait until tomorrow, and not having to ever see us again (until next year). They just don't WANT to have a bank account. Their reasons are many - many of which have nothing to do with any evil Boogeyman in the banking industry - and their reasons are their own and their reasons are valid.

Our “will you cash my check” customers are demanding things we cannot offer:
- Cashback of the entire amount of the initial deposit, or all but $100
- Come back and withdraw the entire amount the next calendar day (Saturday)

This change – the willingness to cash the checks, coupled with a fee to mitigate our risk – would be welcomed, most probably by the unbanked. And what is so UDAPy about catering to the demands of the unbanked? If you all insist, we’ll have every one of them sign a release, “I decline to open a free new account and I just want my money NOW. I am of sound mind and body and I choose to pay a 10% convenience fee in the amount of $_______ (i.e., $300 for $3,000).”

We have GOT to get this country out of the mentality that the government can protect us from everything…because that leads to believing that someone else (regulators, the bankers themselves even!) should make decisions for us consumer-citizens.