Fuming over bank fees
Costly charges are giving customers fee shock, writes Sophie Elsworth
BANKING customers are being slammed with exorbitant charges when using credit cards to make online purchases on overseas websites and when travelling abroad.
High transaction fees have been under the spotlight of the consumer watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, for unfairly gouging customers who splash out more than $40 billion in currency transaction fees.
The ACCC revealed prices were difficult to compare and loyalty to the big four banks was costing customers.
Student recruiter Whitney Steel, 34, said she was “furious” after realising she had shelled out a small fortune in international transaction fees.
The National Australia Bank customer was hit with $140 in international transaction fees over seven months, for an overseas trip to study perfumery.
“I was going through my account and I thought, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got hit’,” she said.
“I got hit with these fees just for using my own money.” Some of the fees were charged on transactions she made to book accommodation, train fares and tuition, while still in Australia.
Once she arrived in France, Ms Steel was hit again every time she used her NAB account to pay.
She has since switched to another financial institution that does not charge international fees.
More banks are waiving international charges, including ING, HSBC, Up, Citi and Xinja.
The fees customers are usually hit with include overseas ATM charges, currency conversion fees and international transaction fees, which can include a percentagebased fee of about 3 per cent of the transaction cost.
ING head of daily banking George Thompson said, regardless of whether Australian customers were online shopping through overseas websites or using their cards overseas, people were “hit with fee shock”.
“It can occur and you don’t necessarily know about it until you see it on your statement,” he said.
Mr Thompson said customers had to sniff out domestic bank accounts that waived these costs – ING dumped them in 2017.
He said ING’s primary banking customers – who hold an Orange Everyday account – were reimbursed about $28 per year on international ATM charges and about $52 on international card purchases.
Its figures showed one customer who travelled to Asia for six months last year saved $1540 in ATM withdrawal fees.
National Australia Bank general manager of everyday banking Simone Van Veen said NAB had a “fee clean-up last year”.
“This has included the removal of fees on top of the conversion rate when issuing or cashing foreign currency,” Ms Van Veen said.
She said NAB would continue to listen to customer feedback to “make changes so any costs incurred by the customer are more visible and easier to understand why they’ve been applied”.