Word: often
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Consumers have come to believe that automated teller machines should distribute cash. Banks believe that ATMs should collect some too--say, a $1.50 bite out of each cash withdrawal at a bank where you're not a customer. And that's just the first bite, because often when you make such a withdrawal, two banks can get into your wallet. The combined ATM fees can reach $3.50 or more. Such sums have now sparked a nationwide legislative brawl over profitable ATM surcharges...
...surcharges are particularly galling to pols and consumer groups because they seem to amount to blatant double dipping. For example, a nondepositor who pays $1.50 for ATM cash often pays his own bank a $1-to-$2 fee for the same transaction. Such fees more than cover the cost of the transaction, which opponents put at 27[cents] per withdrawal. Says Santa Monica's Feinstein: "The banks say there is no free lunch for a service, when in fact they are asking us to pay twice for lunch...
...Year's Eve, of course, is known for disappointment, freighted with the pressure to be the wildest night of the year but often ending in ennui, regret and beer stains. Is this one simply shaping up to be a letdown on a millennial scale? Not necessarily. Party planners and business people predict that customers will start filling hotels, parties and restaurants in the next few weeks--especially if prices drop enough...
...while the traditional, often spiritually based versions of bod-mod are quickly disappearing among indigenous peoples, the impulses behind personal adornment remain unchanged: attracting a mate, signaling status, declaring allegiance to a group...
...spare will want to spring for the full set, others interested in hearing a major artist at the peak of his powers should stand by for the release of individual volumes, starting next year. The bulk of The Rubinstein Collection is given over to later performances that too often are cautious, occasionally even bland. But the first 11 discs, recorded in the '20s and '30s and exquisitely remastered by Ward Marston, sizzle with the devil-may-care brio that made Rubinstein the best-loved pianist of his generation...