Let me just get this out that I'm not disagreeing with you. Yes, I know banks have a shit ton of money and are capable. What we're dealing with here is the ethics of charging the customer for a service that incurs an expense, and whether this should be made illegal or not. Currently, not many people in the US use ATMs outside of the free service ones with their banks. The situation OP brought up of checking your balance on a prepaid card is even more unique and less frequent with a plethora of free options available -- which are being argued as unfairly inconvenient. Inconvenience in this case is not a form of predatory policy, which is my point.

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I addressed this in my initial post -- with the current state of declining use of 3rd party ATMs, do you really think it would be that impactful for banks to start taking on the fees for the very small population? I don't doubt CAN do it as I think it's negligible expense, but what I fear is that they could go in the OTHER direction by cutting ties with these 3rd party ATMs by claiming these are outdated tech that do not need to be expanded on, just like how pay phones completely disappeared throughout the country.