The banking system is broken. You knew that. Banks even know it. That's why they want to get out of the business of having regular people even use them. We don't have enough money to interest them. It's like they see us as mosquitos, nipping away at them, and they want to make our actions, our business with them, as painful as possible so we'll go away.

Full financial reform cannot come soon enough.

But for now, fees are the order of the day. It's not just overdraft fees, but all kinds of fees. Fees are just how banks make money these days. And so in some way it hardly seems commentworthy to remark on yet another fee, but this one seems different than the others and I wanted to take time out to remark on it.

I've been dealing with Citizens Bank for several years. I used to like and recommend them. I no longer do. Several recent policies and interactions have led me to realize that they are rushing headlong toward being the kind of bank I want nothing to do with and that I recommend you avoid as well.

I owed some money to someone and wrote a check to pay it. The payee took it to Citizens Bank, my bank, the bank I wrote the check on. They wanted immediate cash, not to wait a few days. They didn't have an account at Citizens Bank, but walked my check to the teller. Citizens Bank wanted to charge them a fee. Five dollars. A five dollar fee to allow someone standing in my bank holding a check written on that bank by me to allow them to have the money backing up the check I had written to square my debt.

Oh, sure, if they opened an account at Citizens they would get the check cashed for free. But the point of me writing checks is not to promote everyone going to that bank. In fact, there is no way would I voluntarily promote anyone going to that bank now.

What is a check if not the ability to demand payment for the amount on its face? Why stop at five? Why not fifty or a hundred? In what sense have I written a check if the person cashing it can't get the money it mentions?

I understand another bank charging to transport money. I don't like it, but I understand it. I understand my bank charging me a fee for writing a check. I don't like it, but I understand it. But in charging someone I'm trying to pay for the privilege of merely receiving the money I tried to pay them, I think they're beyond the pale.

Lost in all of this issue of fees is the loss of my own good name if I write a check to someone and it costs them money to receive it.  It's like I haven't paid them. What kind of service is that for a bank to provide?

My banker claims that this is standard practice and I'll probably not find another bank that doesn't do it. I didn't have trouble finding that another bank.  But I wondered if others really have had this problem.