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Everyone who has a bank account probably has an Interact Card. It 's a niffty invention that allows you to purchase something or withdraw cash at any given time. Ah, the marvels of technology; sometimes it makes our lives easier and sometimes it makes it worse.
Owning an interact card is a responsability in itself. Personally, I have lost one and damanged another. I've also had a $40 unauthorized cash withdrawal from my account because of my lost / stolen card. And the worst part is, there's not a damn thing they can do about it!
It's great that we have access to our money at any time, especially in emergencies (like when that shirt is on sale at the mall). Youths under 18 don't even get charged for this convienent service. But take a closer look at the system. First of all, the smallest denomination you can withdraw from an ABM (Automatic Banking Machine) is $20. Is there a shortage of $5 bills at the bank? What if you only want to buy lunch and you don't need a whole $20? Believe me, once that $20 is in your pocket, it's just ITCHING to be spent.
Another INCONVIENCE of this so-called convience card, is that you can only make transactions though your bank's own ABM, or else you are charged a $2 service fee. For example, I need to withdraw some cash from my CIBC account, but the nearest ABM is a Royal Bank. If I withdraw from that Royal Bank machine, I'm charged $2.
The humans working at a bank counter are called "TELLERS". If you walk into a bank, maybe you'll be lucky enough to see one, considering they're practically non-existant. On the busiest hours, they will have 1 teller serving customers which results in long, time-comsuming line ups. Of course, they have 5 ABM's around the corner for your convience (plus a SMALL service charge).
Even though youths are not being charged for ABM's or Interact Direct Payment, we soon will be. This is the bank's diabolical plan: they get us dependant on technology, while we're still young. We use the ABM, telephone and computer services, because it's free, so why not take advantage of it? Once we're accostomed to using this technology, we hit the age of 18 and ***BAM!*** they hit us with all these service charges! $2 here, $1.50 there, it seems like chump change but it soon adds up.
To avoid falling into this technology trap, try to use the bank tellers as much as possible. Get an Interact Card for emergencies, but use it only for that case. The teller lines are long and tedious, but in the long run, you'll be saving a lot of money. Not to mention, people's jobs; we don't want people being replaced by technology. So next time you reach for that interact card, think about it first.
by Spiderwebs
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