From Lose Friends Radio comes this ‘Believe it or not’ segment Number 17, called ‘Landlords bite banks’. You can read the transcript below, or listen to the original broadcast by clicking on the green play button: [audio:Jonar_Nader_17_BION_Landlords_bite_banks.mp3]
Believe it or not, according to Jonar Nader, banks could soon be paying footpath rent.
In the good old days, ATMs were located inside banks. They were designed to assist banks to reduce their costs by encouraging ‘less important’ customers to transact with a machine.
As more and more customers came to prefer dealing with metal than with humans, the queues to use the ATMs became longer, and these ‘less important’ customers were taking up too much space inside the bank.
Some bright spark suggested that banks should knock a hole in the wall, so that ATMs could be accessed from the street.
London City Council has floated the idea that banks should pay rates for the amount of space they use on pavements. The Council noted that any busker has to pay rates for the amount of space used, yet banks have managed to push their customers outside, without any compensation to the city’s rate payers.
It is estimated that if banks were to pay the same amount of rates as any busker using the pavement, in London alone, the community would see an injection of over 350 million pounds. This revenue could be used to increase police patrols, security cameras, and street cleaning programs. This is a small contribution towards the costs associated with muggings and bag-snatchings that have risen by 200% year-on-year as a result of ATMs. To date the banks have left this burden up to the community.
Believe it… or not.
Comments are closed.