Lawsuit alleges banks fix ATM fees

Class action suit claims banks and ATM operators colluded to inflate fees.

Several top U.S. banks and ATM operators face a class-action lawsuit claiming they collaborated to charge customers inflated ATM fees, according to court documents.

Customers sometimes pay two fees when they withdraw money from ATMs that are not owned by their bank--an ATM surcharge fee issued by the ATM owner, and a "Foreign ATM Fee" issued by their bank.

Banks charge the "Foreign ATM Fee" to cover the "interchange fee" they pay to the ATM owners, the documents said.

The suit alleges that the "Foreign ATM Fee" is "artificially inflated by the fixed--and unnecessary--interchange fee" and is against U.S. antitrust laws.

Defendants in the case include Concord EFS, First Data Corp (FDC: Research, Estimates)., Bank of America (BAC: Research, Estimates), J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM: Research, Estimates), Citibank (C: Research, Estimates), SunTrust Banks (STI: Research, Estimates), Wachovia (WB: Research, Estimates) and Wells Fargo (WFC: Research, Estimates).

The suit, which was filed in a Manhattan federal court Monday, asks that the companies stop combining to "fix, raise, maintain or stabilize the interchange fee," pay attorney fees for the plaintiffs and grant further payment as seen necessary by the court.
 

Source: CNN MONEY