Bank Of America Deposit Scanning ATM jamming destroy deposits check eating electronic claim department Charlotte HQ'd Incident In New York City New York

Bank of America's new ATMs in New York City feature a scanner in the deposit system, and no longer require the use of envelopes. This was supposedly to combat the problem of people depositing blank slips of paper, then withdrawing $100 in cash immediately thereafter. The deposit is inserted in to the machine without an envelope, where it is automatically scanned and displayed on the screen for the customer to enter their information. Great idea, when it works.


Late one night - about midnight, I deposited a check for $1043.25 in to one of these ATMs, following all protocol for flattening the check and carefully inserting it in the proper direction. The machine greedily sucked my check in to the deposit slot at breathtaking speed, paused, chewed, and attempted to spit the check back out, while loudly beeping and displaying a "Unreadable! Please remove your deposit!" message on the screen. Alas, my check was not sticking out of the deposit slot, but rather, upon closer inspection, I saw a piece of my check twirled around in the rollers and internal mechanism of the deposit acceptor - Then the little door snapped shut and the screen told me that if there wasn't anything else I wanted to do that I should be on my way. I was out a check, out a thousand bucks, and there was nobody around to help.

I went to the branch the following morning, and the branch manager told me that I had no recourse except to call the electronic claim department and file a claim (aside from being rude and unsympathetic)

I called, and after an hour on the phone with one woman, who was actually helpful, they issued me a temporary credit for the amount, THAT I JUST TOLD THEM OVER THE PHONE. They were going to look in to it, and when they found my check, they would make everything right.....

Here's the clincher. I was told that it was MY RESPONSIBILITY to call them back to make sure that everything went OK. Well, OBVIOUSLY it didn't go OK. I called back a week later after checking with my client, and the check still had not cleared (this can be seen as good or bad)

My client put a stop on the check, and I called the bank back. I sat on hold for 20 minutes (typical, I'm sure) until I reached an apathetic man who told me that I should just get a new check from my client and deposit it. As far as the old claim, they explained to me that there was really nothing they could do for me, and that they had to wait and see if they did an audit on that particular machine, and if anything came up, and that once again, it was MY RESPONSIBILITY to call them to see if they had done their job at all, let alone properly.

Now, I'm risking an overdraft here, I can just feel it, and my client is stuck with a stop payment fee, and it's 100% the fault of Bank of America and their stupid new machines. This would have never happened to the bank I was with before they got bought out by Bank of America, and WHY is it my responsibility to manage their problem???? And don't even get me started on maintenance fees!

All I can say is.. DO NOT DEPOSIT IMPORTANT THINGS IN TO AN ATM AT BANK OF AMERICA, ESPECIALLY THE NEW MACHINES! You're placing yourself at risk for a serious pain in the neck at the very least. What if the machine had eaten a bunch of cash in this situation? There would have been no electronic record of the machine accepting the bills, and they were never properly placed in the deposit container - and HOW would you prove that the money was yours? or keep the idiot who maintains the machines from just pulling the half mangled ball of cash out from the space between the screen and the keyboard with a butter knife and putting it in his own pocket?

I'll be switching banks soon enough.

Andy Baker (I'm not afraid to use my full name!!
Portland, Maine
U.S.A.

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