ATT had something very similar in my area. I used to go to the store to pay. They would charge me 3 dollars to pay in cash.

It was outrageous. They eventually dropped the charge along with the ability to pay in store.

My favorite is that Wells Fargo charges $5 to cash a check drawn on their bank, at their own bank, if you don't have an account with them.

This is true even if the check is for, say $10, or even just $2.

AFAIK they still have this policy today.

In one case, a Wells Fargo bank flat out refused to cash a Wells Fargo check. They said I could open an account there and then they'd be happy to honor the check. Of course.

You didn't stop going to them, along with most other people. Why should they change?

To be fair, it's clear why ATT would want to avoid handling cash in the store. Most people probably don't do that, it's probably small amounts, and they probably spent more offering that service than they collected.

The strange thing about verizon was that they wanted to charge a fee when there was no apparent prompting, for one of the more convenient (for verizon as well as customer) methods.

They are thinking, "if you insist on using Visa, you're going to pay Visa's cut."

Verizon can take have 2-3% more money by convincing people to pay by check/ACH rather than eating the unnecessary cost of credit card processors. Probably would have been far less backlash if they stopped accepting credit cards altogether.

ETrade has something like this. Want to close your account? Well,they (used to?) skim $80 off the top as a 'closing fee' or something. Like it costs more money NOT to hold your account.

I got around that one: added the checking feature, and wrote myself a check for the entire balance. Voila!