Wil's Rant

The first thing that comes to my mind over this one is the question as to what took so long? Visa has been named as defendant in a lawsuit brought by merchants over it's charges to them. Merchants have to pay a percentage of sale for every transaction put through their service. This amount is over and above the rates they charge card holders. These costs get passed along to all customers, not just credit card users. Therein lies part of the problem, another part is the price fixing aspect of the whole thing.

Another question that comes to mind is bank machine fees. I've heard over and over about how the use of automated tellers saves the bank massive amounts in payroll. I've heard that the use of said machines costs these institutions less that five cents per transaction. Yet we are being charged on average $1.50 per use. Now that is some sweet profit figure. What a remarkable co-incidence that nearly all the banks are now charging about the same amount for this service. Now that is something. 3000 % profit being uniformly charged by all the banks. That's a class action suit if ever I've heard one, both for price fixing and abuse of the responsibility that these guys have to agree to in order to gain a charter in the first place. Any lawyers out there looking to make themselves famous might want to pay attention!