Consumer Confidential: Pricier wheels, pricier ATMs, pricier prescription drugs

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Here’s your won’t-get-fooled-again Wednesday roundup of consumer news from around the Web:

-- The crises in Japan will also take their toll on auto showrooms. Analysts say that’s because Japanese automakers may not have a steady supply of vehicles for a while, so they won’t be as aggressive in cutting prices for consumers or dealers. That in turn could prompt other automakers to throttle back on the sales incentives as well, making all wheels more expensive. The effect is likely to be greatest with small vehicles and in premium cars and trucks that the Japanese makers tend to make at home. But uncertain parts supplies could extend that to the mid-market models they make in North America. Toyota and Subaru have announced slower production already at their U.S. plants to conserve parts while they see what the supply situation will be.

-- Something else that’s getting pricier: ATM machines. Some banks are now testing $5 fees for people who use ATMs but aren’t bank customers. Banks are scrambling to replace billions of dollars in revenue expected to be lost from new federal regulations on overdraft charges and debit cards. ATMs generated $7.1 billion in fees last year. Of that, banks collected roughly $3 billion from charging their customers for using another institution’s ATM. The operator of that ATM often levies another fee on the same customer, called a surcharge. Those surcharges averaged $2.33 in 2010, up from 89 cents in 1998. Last year, federal lawmakers proposed capping ATM fees at 50 cents. The proposal never came up for a vote.

-- And since we have a theme going here, one more thing that’s dinging you in the wallet: prescription drugs. In the past four years, drug prices have increased much more quickly than prices of other medical products and services, according to the Government Accountability Office. The GAO study, which Congress requested after the federal government spent $78 billion -- or about 31% of the $250 billion U.S. total -- on prescription drugs in 2009, found that prices for common prescription drugs grew at an average annual rate of 6.6% from 2006 through the first quarter of 2010. That’s much higher than the medical consumer price index’s 3.8% average annual increase. And the price hikes follow years of previous increases. In 2007, another GAO report found that the average price for commonly used brand-name prescription drugs had grown approximately 6% per year from January 2000 through January 2007.

-- David Lazarus