Charging us to use our own money?

Apparently this is what one of the "big four" banks in this country is now planning to do. If people want to get cash anywhere other than from an ATM they are planning on charging them $3. 

"Fair enough," I hear you saying, "Someone has to be employed to pass that cash over." 

I don't think that is a proper answer. ATMs are disappearing around here. There used to be six within a hundred metre radius of our local shopping centre. Now there are two. One is accessible from outside. The other, not serviced by a bank, is inside. It is inaccessible outside the times the centre is open. The outside ATM is "out of service" too often for it to be completely reliable. The next ATM is several kilometres away. 

It seems however that cash is going the way of pass books and being able to go into a bank and actually get served by a teller. There are shops which will no longer take cash. It seems they would rather do without your business than have the difficulty of finding a bank willing to actually take cash and being able to do that inside business hours.

The bank which is now planning to charge people to take out cash once had a very busy branch in the shopping centre. There were almost always queues of people in there. The local businesses banked there. They handled money for the local council and much more. They had a dedicated teller machine too. All that has gone. The local post office (not open on Saturdays) now has to handle some of the bank's work. They do not have extra staff to do this.

Most of us have no choice but to use a bank. It is not simply a matter of "convenience" but a necessity.  They should be there as a service not to themselves but to the "customers".  It will be interesting to see if the bank in question has to backtrack on this "fee" - or whether it will encourage other banks to do the same.