strange goings on at bank auto-teller. OT

[misterroy]

1. A friend came across £100 at the auto-teller. She took it inside th e bank. No-one claimed it, she got the £100.

1. My wife, some years ago, walked away from the auto-teller instead of pic king up the £200 she just requested. When she realised she went into t he bank and asked what would happen. She was told if no-one had taken the m oney it would be sucked back into the machine. So she asked if the money ha d been sucked back into the machine. "We can not tell yet, but come back in a month" was the reply.

I do not understand the separation of data between the machine and the bank , perhaps between the branch and the machine, but the branch should be able to call somewhere central and find out. Especially for the first example, the customer who is £100 down must have been the previous customer to my friend, how hard would that have been to find out?

[DerbyBorn]

Don't assume the bank has any control or interest in the ATM. Most are operated by a separate company or contractor.

[Huge]

ATMs at bank branches are owned and operated by the bank, at least for the Big 4. The fact that the cash handling is contracted out is irrelevant.

[Michael Chare]

Apparently the Japanese are very honest when it come to finding money. People hand any money they find to the police. But if the money is not claimed, then it goes to the finder. Someone got something like £700,000 (Moneybox programme on R4 today.)

[stvlcnc43]

A friend of mine found a purse containing £70 in notes, some coins, an d no means of identifying the owner, so took it to the Police Station and h anded it in as Found Property. 3 (or 6) months later, she got a letter tell ing her that the purse had not been claimed, and she could collect it from the Police Station. When the desk officer brought out the purse, it was fou nd to be empty, so the officers present had a whip-round to replace the ? ?70!

[Jethro_uk]

Many years ago (1980s) when I was at Uni, a friend requested £10 from a Midland ATM, but only £5 was dispensed. He immediately went inside, and got an "oh, yeah ??" reaction. However a week later his account was credited by £5. Apparently an audit revealed the machine had paid out £5 more than it was loaded with.

As I say, "apparently". I was shown the letter, but believed it as much then as now ...

I told my friend to keep the letter in case he ever had another problem. In those days the SOP was "our machines are infallible", so a letter admitting otherwise would have been useful.

[Brian Gaff]

The machines are often run by a third party, Link or some other load of inept people who are contracted by several banks usually. Most of these machines if they are not brand new run on windows XP embedded and point of sale ready, and I suspect thesoftware is also quite old. Brian

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Really? Never heard that one before. Can anyone confirm it happens?

[Huge]

Yes I can and yes it does.

[damduck-egg]

Happened to me many years ago , must have been shortly after banks started reciprical arrangements with each other. I was with Nat West and I think it was a Midland machine . It was laid out differently to the NW one and the cash slot wasn't in the position I was used to with the cash silently appearing in a position I was not looking at, possibly Sun glare was making it difficult to see as well. Just as I noticed the notes sitting there they were drawn back in . Enquiring within the branch they said once the incident could the. verified the amount would be credited back . No idea how they did it, perhaps a receipt gets dropped internally into the hopper the returned notes get dropped in when it occurs.

G.Harman

[NY]

I would have thought that it's easy to detect whether any of the wad of notes has been removed, and if the wad is intact they can credit the money without any human intervention. The difficulty is if *some* of the notes are returned, because you manage to grab the top note(s) and the rest get sucked back in. Then they need human intervention (with a receipt slip or something similar) to say "there should be £x here, but some notes were taken so check how much was returned". At least then they don't have to manually check every return, only the partial ones.

[Peter Johnson]

Me too. Probably the second time I had used an ATM. I think I went into the branch and they checked it straight away. The note concerned was crumpled.

[Dave Liquorice]

I think the whole thing could be automagic. No cash should come back in. If any does, it counts what has and flags the banking system that account X should be credited amount Y. Machine counting of notes isn't difficult.

Though TBH I'd expect when a machine is refilled that the amount left (if any...) in a machine is correct according to how much it was loaded with, thinks it has given out and how much has been sucked back. I'd expect anything sucked back to go into a seperate box rather than the dispensing cassette.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Wouldn't it be tricky to retrieve the notes once dispensed and count them again too? I'd say it would be easier to just plonk them in a special container for non collected. Not like it's going to happen often. Or rather, not with me. ;-)

[Dave Liquorice]

Well the retrivel doesn't seem to be a problem. Counting isn't difficult with the florescent markings.

I said I expected that to happen. And it wouldn't be that difficult to drop a printed bit of paper on top giving details of which transaction the cash came from and act as a seperator.

[Mike Clarke]

Counting is done on the outgoing route. Adding a mechanism to count things going back in might require more equipment. Returning notes would also need to be processed to determine their denomination. I doubt if the machines have any ability to do this, they're probably loaded with each denomination in a separate section. I suspect returned notes are just dumped to a separate container to be dealt with manually.

[Huge]

^ This.

[whisky-dave]

Just before xmas I was standing outside the santander ATM at college and th ere was a memeber of bank staff helping a student deposit £3,000 in ca sh into the ATM vai an envolope, seemed to be taking ages.

[Chris Bartram]

ISTR a case not long ago of bank staff loading the note feeders incorrectly (probably 20s into the 10 slot) so that people got double their money.

[Jethro_uk]

It was reported in the news ... apparently police were called to a long queue at the cashpoint at 3am.