— And Are Charging You Double to Get Your Own Money
A few months ago, I could walk a half mile to a Speedway convenience store, hit the Wells Fargo ATM, and be back home in minutes. No drama, no extra fees, and no lost time. Today, that ATM is gone. So are most of the others in my area that used to carry the Wells Fargo logo. Bank of America and Chase are also doing it to friends and family.
It’s not just grocery chains and food manufacturers squeezing households. When a big bank quietly rewrites the rules on accessing your own cash, the shock waves hit the dinner table too.
If I want cash now, I have two choices:
- Use a convenience store or third–party ATM and pay their fee, and then
- Get hit again by Wells Fargo’s own “out of network” fee.
Total damage? Roughly $7–$8 just to access my own money.
Or I can drive about five miles to the nearest Wells Fargo branch, burn 20–25 minutes round–trip, and hope I have enough time to slice and dice my food for a proper dinner.
When I asked an internal Wells Fargo Customer Complaint wonk about it, I got the kind of jargon that should come with a warning label: “We’re reshaping our core competencies to better serve the customer.”
Translation: we made it harder and more expensive for you to get your own money, but please clap for the performance. And try the veal…they’re here until Thursday.
The Hidden Fee You Don’t See on a Receipt
Most people understand an ATM surcharge. You put in your card, the screen warns you about a $3.50 fee, you either accept or walk away. That’s the obvious cost.
What’s less obvious is the time tax. Moving ATMs out of convenience stores and into a smaller number of branches doesn’t just change the logo on the machine. It changes your day.
In my case, what used to be a two–minute walk is now a car trip across town:
- Five miles of driving
- Traffic lights and parking lots
- Waiting in lobby lines or at drive–ups
- Twenty–plus minutes gone
That lost time doesn’t come out of a vacuum. It comes out of something else in a person’s day. And for a lot of families, that “something else” is grocery shopping, meal prep and the already–tight food budget.
What Does This Have to Do with Food?
One of SpokenFood’s roles is to follow the money from boardroom decisions to kitchen tables.
When a bank adds friction and fees to basic access to cash, here’s what happens:
- Less money left for groceries. Seven or eight dollars in ATM charges is a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread. It’s produce that didn’t make it into the cart. It’s the difference between fresh and boxed.
- Less time to cook. Twenty–five minutes burned driving to a branch can turn a planned home–cooked meal into “screw it, we’ll grab fast food.” Convenience fills the gap that banking policy created.
- More pressure on people who use cash for food. Farmers markets, food trucks, diners, local bakeries, and small ethnic groceries still run heavily on cash. When getting that cash becomes more expensive and more annoying, some people stop going.
- Lowest–income customers get hit hardest. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, you may not have the flexibility to “just use debit” everywhere or float extra charges. Forcing extra fees and travel time on those customers is not “better service.” It’s a penalty for being poor and the banks know it. So much for better service in the name of core competencies.
None of this shows up in a bank’s press release. It shows up in people’s cupboards, fridges, and bank balances.
The Corporate Script vs. Real Life
When I pressed Wells Fargo on the changes, the answer came wrapped in buzzwords: strategic realignment, core competencies, optimizing the network. What you don’t hear in that language is the word customer in any meaningful way.
Because from the customer’s side, the reality is simple:
- Fewer ATMs where people actually live and shop
- More fees at the machines that remain
- More time and gas burned just to get cash
- Less money and time left for food
That’s not a strategy. That’s a squeeze.
The Bigger Pattern: Every Sector, Same Story
We’ve reported at SpokenFood on grocery chains, restaurant groups, and food manufacturers who quietly turn the screws on consumers while blaming “market conditions” or “supply chain challenges.”
Banks are using the same playbook. Only this time, the maneuver isn’t on the shelf price of eggs — it’s on the cost of reaching your own money before you ever step into the store.
When you add banking fees to fuel costs, rent, utilities, and rising food prices, you don’t just have inflation. You have an ecosystem of small, deliberate decisions that all point in the same direction: upward pressure on the cost of simply living.
What Can Consumers Do?
None of this is financial advice, but here are a few common–sense moves people are already making AND best of all, here is a list of ATM-free banks:
Ally Bank – Interest Checking / MMDA
- Refunds up to $10/month in out-of-network ATM fees; big Allpoint + MoneyPass network.
Alliant Credit Union – High-Yield Checking
- Refunds up to $20/month in ATM fees (domestic).
Navy Federal Credit Union – Free Easy Checking
- Up to $10/statement cycle in ATM fee rebates (membership restrictions: military/related).
Eastern Bank, TD Bank, etc.
- Several regionals offer $10–$15/month in ATM refunds on specific “premium” checking tiers.
Do this with your own bank – and hold them to it. Get letters from the bank manager. If a million of you do this, Big Bank is going to have to make changes. This is where it starts!
- Track ATM fees for a month. Know exactly how much of your food budget is slipping out in banking charges.
- Ask your bank for a written explanation. Make them put their “better serving the customer” language on paper. Banks hate paper trails that don’t match reality.
- Use credit unions and other local banking options! When possible in your area, look for these options, especially those that keep ATMs where people actually live and shop.
Finally? Tell your story. You alone aren’t going to change the monolith that is the banking industry in America. But…when enough customers speak up — publicly and loudly — it becomes harder for any institution to hide behind a memo about “core competencies.” Our SpokenFood YouTube channel made a video for that purpose:
“One of you is a complaint. A million of you? Now that’s impossible to ignore — and when enough voices push back, even Big Banking has no choice but to adapt.”
The Bottom Line
Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Chase will say this is about efficiency, strategy, or technology. On paper, maybe it is. But on the ground, for real people trying to stretch paychecks and feed families, it looks like something else: another quiet way to skim a few more dollars and minutes from lives that are already stretched thin.
SpokenFood will keep following the money — from Wall Street to the grocery aisle, from bank lobbies to kitchen tables. Because every time a corporation makes it harder or more expensive to live, your home and your plate feels it, whether they admit it or not.
Sources & Images: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Bankrate, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Forbes, The US Sun, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal