Fight With a Cash Machine

The starting position is the machines never malfunction. This was reported widely in the early 80s when people had problems.

When I was at Uni a friend went to get £10 from a machine, and only got a £5 note. Luckily the bank was open and he immediately went in and lodged a complaint. After a few days, they contacted him and admitted the machines logs showed it had paid out £5 more than it had been loaded with. And refunded him.

For myself, I had a machine eat my card once. It was returned with a letter that apologised for the fault in the machine. I kept that letter for about 20 years (I may still have it) in case I ever had to rebutt the banks stance that "our machines don't fail".

The Horizon system is perfect - in the same way

I had just finished a three-month job in Mexico City, and was getting cash out of the ATM at a bank at a branch of the supermarket chain Carrefour, on a Friday afternoon. The machine, which I had used successfully several times before, made a lot of mechanical grinding noises, and ate my card, giving me no cash or receipt. Luckily, the branch was still open, so I went in and complained, but all I got was a few shrugs of shoulders, "Not my machine, signor" was the general response. As I was leaving for home the next day, I managed with what cash I had and a couple of credit cards, and back home the next Monday, I went straight to my bank and reported the card's loss. This being in America, I was given a new temporary card on the spot, the real one arriving a few days later in the post. At least the machine did not report my being given any money, that would have been too much.

Snip

Ha! Happened to me with a car park M/c. Embossed card and I put it in the wrong way. Finger tips not strong enough to grip and remove. Luckily I was able to borrow a pair of pliers from my hairdresser nearby:-)

Alderholt Co-Op has a Post Office Counter. Could you not have drawn your cash out using that?

Appreciate not all banks may have an arrangement with them but if yours does would save the hassle with the ATM.

GH

I was in Nanning in China and went to a cash machine, but the machine didn't pay out, so I went inside the bank and told the guard what had happened. He informed one of the cashiers who checked the cash machine and gave me the cash I had requested. When I got home my bank had also refunded me, but there was no mechanism in place to pay back the extra money.

I had just spent 30 minutes at the PO counter arranging the return of an SSD to Czechoslovakia. I couldn't believe the process, 4 x labels on the envelope all together!

Must admit it didn't cross my mind, I only use cash twice a year for the chap that cleans my oven and it's about due.

Darn, I hate it when that happens.

When I was in China, there weren't any cash machines. I had to go to the Bank of China on Shanghai's Bund, presenting my passbook and a little form requesting the amount of cash I wanted. I was given a little slip of paper, a chit, he marked the amount in my passbook, and then I waited until the chit's number came up on a screen, telling me which teller to go to. If I had dropped the chit, and somebody had picked it up, he could have presented it and taken my money. The teller gave me the cash, and I went on my happy way, with a load of Foreign Exchange Currency, FEC, in my hand. At the market, it could be exchanged 2 for 1 for the money that was actually used by the locals, RMB.

Had a similar experience once long ago using a machine outside a co-op bank. Put my card in, and checked my balance which it printed. Would you like to make another transaction? Yes I thought... it said please re-insert your card which it had now ejected. I was about to remove and reinsert the card, when girl friend at the time[1] decided to be helpful and pushed the card back into the machine. Alas the mechanism did not seem to allow for this, and it just sat there beeping, asking me to remove the card. Which was now not sufficiently exposed to actually get hold of! Eventually it swallowed the card and informed me it had been retained.

A few days later I got a letter with the card enclosed, and an offer to be shown how to use a cash machine properly!

You are lucky! Our local branch of the Co-op has a Cashzone ATM, which has paper for the receipt for maybe one week each year. "It's not our machine" is the standard response from the staff, which although true, is of no help whatsoever. E-mail messages to Cashzone go unanswered.

On that basis, surely your friend should have refunded the bank?

You are saying that the machine logs showed that the machine had paid out *more* than it had been loaded with. This in itself hardly supports your friend's argument that he was underpaid by £5.

No, it proved it.

Machine was loaded with (say) £1,000 (presumably from some sort of external audit). Machine says it paid out £1,005 - which was at the point my friend (who asked for £10) got £5.

You can see where the mistake happened. And so it seemed did the bank.

This was in the mid 1980s when machines were quite primitive. I don't think it shut down after running out of money - or displayed a message.

The bank was Midland though.

There certainly used to be the odd case of the wrong notes being loaded

- £5 or £20 instead of £10 - so it was dispensing a different amount to what was selected.

I can recall a few stories of queues at cashpoints whne people realised.

Would be more common in the US I'd have thought.

Ha! indeed.

I worked for an outfit that had maintenance contract for Mercury payphones. The only time I was called out was on a Sunday morning, I had to drive from Manchester to Liverpool (or was it Birkenhead?)

The stated problem "customer's credit card stuck in reader", which I didn't believe, because the mag-stripe was read by manually inserting and withdrawing the card, it is never out of reach. I assumed the "customer" has put the card into the separate Mercury card slot which does ingest the card.

However when I got there, the "customer" was long gone but her card was still there, and was stuck in the CC slot. I pulled it out with pliers. It wasn't the embossed lettering that was jamming it, it was a strategically placed cigarette burn.

I posted the card through her banks letterbox with a note.

My friend is currently going through something very similar. In her case she used a cash machine to get £500. The machine accepted the card and the PIN but it didn't produce any money. It didn't even stick the money in a slot and then took it back, as happened to you.

This machine was inside an HSBC branch and she is with First Direct, which is a subsidiary. The branch staff were useless and didn't try hard to help but they said the money would very likely re-appear in her account in a few days. Anecdotal comments online suggest this is very much what usually happens.

This was just before Christmas. £500 has been debited from her account and NOT credited back. She complained to her bank, who arranged for someone to check the machine's end of day totals, and these showed no error. (Shades of Post Office Horizon machine error here.)

My friend is a very thorough person and the last person to make any mistake about the steps she took. She wasn't distracted by anyone in the queue (who may have scooped up the cash).

So I'm not sure what she will do. I've suggested she ask for a copy of the security video, assuming it covers the cash machines, which she can do under the Data Protect Act. That might show she didn't collect up any banknotes from the machine and support her story.

She will probably find there is a retention period for the CCTV.

My friend had an opposite experience. She went to a Barclays machine as she wanted English notes. Due to a combination of sun and a defective screen her card was retained. She writes good letters and wrote to the Barclays manager (even though not a customer) then received a massive bunch of flowers and was most impressed.