Banks have been a total joke for a long time...
I really had my first wake-up call around 1989-90 as manager of a gift store. During the Christmas holidays, we'd take a lot of cash, which then would end up in the deposits. On a busy weekend going into Monday we might have $4,000 in cash to deposit... and that was when I first came across a small line item on our statement: the bank was actually CHARGING us $1.50 per $1,000 to COUNT CASH!!
Wait... isn't the core function of a bank to handle money? And keep in mind this was 30 years ago.
I made an appointment with the manager to let her know we were closing all our business accounts, citing the cash counting fee. She made some mumbling rationalizations about "the cost of doing business," so I asked her if it would be a problem next time she came to our store (she was a customer) that we would "charge $2 for running the cash register, because it was part of the cost of doing business."
Crickets chirped...
Hilarious. Years ago (90's) I stopped using banks and would have to cash my work checks. I was astonished they began charging me to cash my paycheck. I was like, "But my work banks here. This is their check drawn on your bank." Was told the same as you, cost of doing business if I wanted to exchange the check for money. Since then I hear they now demand your fingerprint on the check if you won't open an account.
I left it out of my post here, but was reading of people complaining about the banks asking why you want your money if you try to withdraw a couple grand, one person saying the bank refused to give it to her because they didn't like her answer. People better wake up, now they hardly pretend its our money.