Courthouse News, "Suit Says Banks Overcharge ATM Users"

          Several of the nation's largest banks and automatic teller machine (ATM) network companies have been hit with a class action antitrust lawsuit in California Federal Court that claims the banks have conspired to double-charge ATM patrons when they withdraw funds from ATMs not owned by the users' bank.
          The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claims that the defendants, including Wachovia Bank, Wells Fargo and Bank One, have worked together to pass the "interchange fee" charged to them by the ATM networks on to their customers in the form of a "foreign ATM fee." At the same time, the ATM networks also charge users a surcharge directly, which is usually the same amount as the interchange fee charged to the banks. All of these fees, the suit alleges, are fixed by the defendant banks and ATM networks in collaboration with each other.
          "Foreign ATM fees have since become a lucrative source of income for banks, particularly for large banks that tend to charge significantly higher foreign ATM fees than smaller banks," writes Joseph Saveri, the San Francisco attorney handling the case. "The banks have engaged in price fixing to create for themselves an illegitimate flow of revenue from foreign ATM fees based on unnecessary interchange fees."