BankWest limits ATM fee experiment

BankWest's experimental deal whereby it pays all foreign ATM fees for its customers is coming to an end. It seems that many BankWest customers chose to use expensive third party cash machines, which pushed costs up to unsustainable levels.

From November 2009 the BankWest Zero transaction account will pay foreign ATM fees for its customers only when they use an ATM owned by one of the other big four banks (including Commonwealth Bank, the owner of BankWest).

Customers who have opened a Zero account between May 1 and July 23 2009 will have the previous deal 'grandfathered' for six months, then they too will get free ATM access only from a big bank ATM.

Paul Vivian, BankWest's head of savings and deposits says some other ATM network fees are simply too expensive for the bank to cover.

"Since we announced the deal to cover all ATM fees we have tracked the behaviour of our customers and noted that some of the ATM fees charged by third party machines are very high and obviously we had no control over that.

"The costs were higher than we would have liked."

Vivian says limiting the deal to the big four ATM networks is still an expensive exercise for the bank.

"We have no deal with the other banks, unfortunately, we are simply wearing the ATM fees ourselves.

"The customer goes to the machine, presses the button to accept the fee to complete the transaction but we pay the fee on behalf of the customer."