The Australian Bankers Association has produced a remarkably disingenuous response to the Reserve Bank report on bank fees, which highlights the fact that 20 per cent of the fees paid by retail customers are exception fees.In a statement issued yesterday the ABA said households could cut their fees "by some simple changes in behaviour."The ABA says that "by using your own bank's ATM, ensuring accounts are not overdrawn and your credit card paid on time, money can be saved."In the past year the Banking and Financial Services Ombudsman (now the Financial Ombudsman Service) and the Code Compliance Monitoring Committee have criticised the banks for failing to deal appropriately with customers who have told their banks they are experiencing financial hardship. The fact that banks do not have the proper procedures in place to deal with approaches from customers who are in trouble has resulted in additional costs being borne by those customers.Last month the Code Compliance Monitoring Committee reported that there was a systemic problem with banks failing to meet requests to close direct debit facilities. In many cases this failure resulted in extra costs to the customer.There are many instances where these fees are imposed on customers who should not have to pay them and who cannot avoid them. The ABA is well aware of this.The ABA has also failed to address criticism from government and consumer groups that exception fees are higher than they need to be to recover costs. Despite the reductions made by some banks, consumer groups still argue that the fees are high.