A Modest Proposal 0
Barbara Brotman, writing at the Chicago Trib, suggests a strategy for keeping debit card charges in check.
Paying by check.
She describes the experience:
Clerks fall silent, perplexed. They summon supervisors to ask what they should do.
At one store, I was escorted to a special register staffed by someone who still knew the ancient ways: The taking of the driver’s license, the request for the home phone number, the electronic petitioning of the check approval gods.
It won’t work, of course. If persons start writing checks for $0.79 cups of coffee, merchants will refuse them (as well they should–remember “minimum check payment” signs?) and banks will levy fees on them.
Flash from the Past:
When I got my first checking account, back before banks discovered that composing seductive deceptive fine print paid better dealing above the board, there was a 10 cent fee per check.
No one thought twice about it.
The bank was providing a service and deserved reasonable remuneration.
It’s when they went after unreasonable remuneration that they turned down the wrong path.
