Bank penalises kids' coins

By SIMON COLLINS and MATHEW DEARNALEY

A small business supplying healthy lunches to 28 Auckland schools was hit by the ASB Bank with cash-handling fees of hundreds of dollars a week.

Barbara Gaston, of the Cool School Lunch Company, says the fees would have snuffed out the business if she had not found a cheaper way of banking through security firm Chubb-Securitas.

Almost all Cool Schools' takings are in coins, with prices ranging from $1.20 for crackers and Marmite to $3 for a ham or chicken roll.

The company banks more than $2000 daily, all but a few hundred dollars in coins. Since February 28, ASB has charged $3 to handle every $100 in coins above the first $100 a day, and $3 for every $1000 in notes above the first $1000.

On $2000 in coins a day, Cool Schools would be paying $57 a day, or $285 a week, in cash-handling fees.

"I just can't believe that the bank feels that it can charge those sorts of rates when a commercial business is making a profit that is just a tiny fraction of that," Barbara Gaston said. "It's just crippling.

"I guess someone overseas has decided it's time we didn't have cash. Well, you tell that to 5-year-olds. I think it's criminal."

A pamphlet produced by the ASB says the cash-handling fee can be reduced to $2 per $100 of coins, or $2.50 for each $1000 in notes, if customers use a "speedy deposit bag" which can be counted later in the day.

An even cheaper option is to deposit cash at one of the ASB's 30 "Business Express" branches with special deposit bags. That costs $1 for every $100 in coins or $2 for every $1000 in notes, but would still cost Cool Schools $19 a day, or $95 a week, to bank $2000 in coins.

Instead, the business now uses Chubb-Securitas, which charges only about $90 a month.

ASB spokeswoman Barbara Chapman said some customers with large cash receipts had negotiated exemptions from the cash-handling fees.

Business Express branches had machines that counted coins, but they were sometimes counted by hand at other branches.

She said the ASB felt obliged to introduce the fees because other banks were already charging them, and their customers were bringing in cash to the ASB and then writing cheques to transfer the money to their main banks.

However, the ASB appears to be the only bank that charges extra for coins.

Meanwhile, 81-year-old Auckland pensioner Betty Peters is delighted with a settlement reached yesterday with WestpacTrust over $6000 drained from her modest life savings after the theft of her automatic banking card.

The settlement, which neither party wants to disclose, followed an initial refusal by the bank to take responsibility for the losses after learning that she had kept a personal identification number in her wallet.

Mrs Peters, who has banked with WestpacTrust or its predecessors for more than 40 years, said she only reluctantly accepted the card in the first place and kept the number in the wallet to show to a helper needed to guide her through cash withdrawals because of her failing eyesight.

The banks - a Herald series

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