Regarding banks closing ATM's. I thought because less people are using cash and also it costs the banks to maintain these machines.
So yeah a suspicious looking ATM called Next Payment is in the same place and the naming sounded like a short term loan so I avoided using it.
Turns out I dodged a bullet. Some bad comments on their facebook page say they were charged $2.90 instead of $2.50 fee for using the ATM.
And some worse ones say the ATM was confusing to use resulting in needing to try again or out of cash and they were charged the fee multiple times, each time for every try.
Just wanted to point out these ATM's with shady eyes and help others avoid unwanted fees.
I've been expecting this sort of shit since they made the ATMs "fee-free" between the customers of the four major banks. It doesn't make business sense to maintain a large network of ATMs because "everyone else" gets to use it free anyway and if you remove some, your customers can use other banks' ATMs without a fee.
I think Westpac or ANZ has started outsourcing ATMs to a third party group. Technically, the ATM doesn't belong to the bank (and isn't labelled as such), but that particular ATM is fee-free for their customers. That way, it's not free for customers of other banks.
The fee is actually clearly displayed if people bothered to look at the screen before pressing the button to continue. That Next brand ATM is frustratingly slow, so I don't know people can miss it. I've mostly seen them at pubs and clubs for the pokie rooms (amongst other places of course) where people are "desperate" for cash.