MOST of us use those hole-in-the-wall cashpoints to get money, but it turns out the greedy banks are using them to take money off us.

For today it is revealed that, though each transaction costs just 29p, some banks charge customers a 'disloyalty fee' of as much as £1.50 for using cash machines other than their own.

This is simply a racket - and one that victimises people in smaller towns where bank closures have left them without cashpoints belonging to their own bank.

Furthermore, cashpoints and their users - and now the upsurge of electronic banking - have saved the banks vast sums as the overheads they had with old-style personal banking have plummeted.

Banks have never been philanthropic institutions, but this greedy grab of theirs at the cashpoints is outrightly customer-hostile and discriminatory.

The government should outlaw it forthwith.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.