ATM Fee Reimbursement
 

Question for the group.

My bank claims to refund all ATM fees from withdrawals made on their cards. Domestically, it works great--they charge me the fee and then refund it at the end of the statement period. Perfect.

I'm convinced, however, that it works significantly less well for international withdrawals. Over the past 12 months, I've traveled to Japan (where I used a post office and a 7-11), France (BNP Paribas), and London (HSBC), where I've used the card to withdraw money. I've brought home the receipts and sent them to my banker, who then a few days later has told me the same thing every time. "We've looked at the transactions, and we determined that the local bank didn't charge you a fee." Could that possibly be true? Could international financial institutions really let me use their ATMs for nothing?" The whole thing seems fishy to me. . .

Some banks have agreement/relationships with other international banks for use of their ATM network. It sounds like you are a Bank of America customer from your usage.

As someone else mentioned, Bank of America offers what is called the Global ATM Alliance. It is a network of overseas banking institutions that have partnered to offer global ATM access to its banking clients without ATM transaction fees on either side.

Since you mentioned that they also reverse your domestic ATM fees, I doubt it's BofA, but maybe some other program similar. BofA will reverse domestic ATM fees only if you live outside their "footprint".

First Republic
 

Sorry, I'm actually with First Republic. I don't think that they have a reciprocal relationship with anyone. . .

Why don't you check your bank statement? You would be able to tell right away if they charged you a fee or not, and that would answer your "Could that possibly be true?" question right away.

I often withdraw cash from ATMs when I'm out of the country and I am never assessed a transaction fee.

In many countries, there are no ATM surcharges. Even the US did not have surcharges until relatively recently. Remember that when you use an outside ATM, your bank pays the ATM owner a fee already. The surcharge is just extra.

Under Visa/MC rules (I believe), if there is a surcharge it has to be disclosed on the screen before you complete the transaction, and you must affirmatively accept it. Unless there is a language barrier and you're randomly pressing buttons, it's impossible to get charged a surcharge without knowing it.

ATM Fee Reimbursement
 

I didn't get charged for using HSBC ATM in Toronto. I have US Bank debit card.

That's right. The ATMs in Japan do not charge a per-transaction or a percentage forex fee. The only fee you'll pay for using a US-issued ATM card in Japan is whatever that the issuing bank might charge. If it doesn't charge anything, then there's no fee whatever, and there's nothing for the bank to reimburse if it has a "reimburse the ATM operator's fee" policy. As stated above, there is a small service fee paid by your bank to the ATM operator to cover the cost of connecting into the network, but this small and is designed to be just compensatory and not a profit center in of itself.

Also, I have an interesting effect on my Bank Direct checking account: they have a policy of no network ATM fees, plus a rebate of any fee the ATM charges, up to $2.50/transaction and up to 4 transactions/month. But, they don't appear to have any way of knowing what the actual fee charged by the ATM is. What they've done is assume that all withdrawals are at the very least in $5 increments, so they assume that the amount of the transaction that's above the nearest even $5 value is the ATM surcharge. That works fine in the US, as there's no way to make a withdrawal in smaller-than-$5 increments. But for foreign withdrawals, they apply the same logic. So, for example, if you make a withdrawal in Japan, there's no ATM fee there, and they convert the transaction that's in an even yen amount using the interbank rate, add a 1% forex fee, and that's the US$ transaction amount. Then they apply the ATM rebate policy. So, you end up getting a rebate of anywhere from $0 to $2.50 per withdrawal on the "ATM fee" even though there was none, and it's more or less random each time, based on how the particulars of the exchange rate happen to work out on the day of the transaction.

I've been to Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Germany, Hong Kong and the Czech Republic in the last 6 months, and not a single ATM fee charged by the owners of those terminals. Pretty typical experience for me.The only time I ever recall paying an ATM fee, outside the U.S., was at a bank in Montreal.

I had that very issue with State Farm Bank. They were aware of it and at some point changed their software and the rebates went away.

I ran into fees at the Madrid airport where the first ATM I went to use advised me they were going to add on a three Euro fee. I canceled and walked over to an ATM that is part of a bank branch and did the same transaction for free.

And, in Bangkok now, all the Thai banks add a $5 fee for using a non-Thai ATM card, no matter the amount withdrawn. However, at least some foreign banks (Citibank and others) do not add this fee.

I recently used my Schwab ATM card in Bangkok (at the airport where there are no foreign ATMs I could find) and got socked for the five bucks which Schwab automatically credited back to my account.

It depends on the processor the Financial Institution uses for their ATM network and in some cases the core banking platform. In most cases the withdrawal amount is in a separate field from the fee but not for every network / banking platform.

I have seen this before as well, just watch out in the US when you get a $5 fee, make sure to keep your receipt.

How do you not know if you are being charged a fee or not? Compare the money you get from the machine from what your statement says you were charged. If they were the same, there was no fee, if the statement is more, there probably was a fee.

Really I can't picture asking them to refund something without even knowing if I was charged it in the first place.

Well in all fairness, if the money you get from the machine and your statement are in different currencies, it's a bit hard to compare.

If you can't figure it out without going to the bank with your statements, you have no business traveling to another country. You would be way too easy of a mark for everybody to cheat you.