Here’s a sample letter to the editor on ATM surcharging. You must generally list your name, full snail mail address, and a phone number so that the newspaper can verify your authorship, even if you choose to use a paper’s email letter-to-the-editor capabilities.

Your Name

Your Full Address/Street/City/State/Zip

Your phone (day or evening)

To the editor,

Why are cities from San Francisco to New York City [to LISTYOURCITY], lining up to ban double ATM surcharges? It’s simple. Consumers, city councils and even generals have gotten tired of the banks’ tired explanations why it cost a buck or so to use an ATM in 1995 and why now the cost has tripled, [according to story in YOURPAPER].

Five years ago, on April 1, 1996, the biggest ATM networks, Plus and Cirrus, began allowing ATM owners to charge a second $1-2 fee, called a surcharge, whenever a non-customer used one of their machines. That’s on top of their piece of the $1-2 you have always paid your own bank when you use a “foreign” ATM. That’s right, they’ve always been paid once. Now they’re being paid twice. Worse, surcharges help the high-fee big banks get bigger, which means higher fees down the line and less competition as they drive smaller, low-cost banks out of business..

It’s too bad Congress [and LISTYOURSTATESTATE] couldn’t do anything about it. But, in November, 1999, San Francisco voters banned surcharges by a 2-1 margin. In October, 1999 the Santa Monica City Council approved a ban. So did Woodbridge, and Newark's NJ’s City Councils in 2001. Other cities, including New York and Chicago, are considering bans.

The big banks are fighting back. The banks have obtained injunctions blocking implementation of the California and New Jersey laws. Wells Fargo and Bank of America have also declared war on consumers. They have threatened to bar ATM access by non-customers anywhere surcharges are banned. Their outrageous threat is intended for one reason alone -- to chill reform efforts by other cities.

Banks shouldn’t fight consumers and the cities trying to protect them. XCITY should join cities across America in putting an end to double ATM surcharging. It’s unfair to consumers and it threatens competition in the marketplace.