|
"I was trying to obtain money from a nearby
ATM. I heard money being distributed, but the door did not open.
I went inside the bank, and they told me there was nothing they
could do until the person who can open the ATM arrives. They took
down my name and number. I did not get a call back. When I went
back to the bank, they acted as if they had never seen me before
and stated that the person who opens the ATM did not report any
money left in the withdrawal door. How can I get my money back?"
E-mail from a Bankrate.com reader
If an ATM gobbles your card, gives you the wrong amount
of money or gives you no money at all, talking to the personnel
inside the branch, in some instances, will probably do as much good
as kicking the machine.
It's not that the bank folks don't want to be helpful,
it's that there are specific procedures to follow when an ATM malfunctions.
"People get upset, and when they go into the
branch and find out nothing can be done, they get even more upset,"
says Bill Raymond of Bank of America. "But the people in the
branch have no way of knowing why that card was captured.
"Sometimes the ATM eats the card because it's
supposed to. The card is defective or it's known to be compromised.
Maybe it's involved in a fraudulent transaction. The ATM may get
instructions from the bank that issued the card: Don't let that
card get away."
And you thought the ATM only knew how to count money.
Who's responsible?
The first thing to do when an ATM malfunctions is call the bank
that issued the card to you. This is true whether the ATM is owned
by a bank or is a generic machine, such as the ones often found
in convenience stores or entertainment venues.
"The consumer's financial institution is responsible
for following up any malfunction," says Mary Brown of PULSE,
an electronic funds-transfer network that links 60 million cardholders
with 78,000 ATMs nationwide.
That's not to say you won't get some assistance, under
certain circumstances, by walking into the branch.
If you're at your own bank's ATM during business hours,
you may be able to get a replacement card by telling branch personnel
about the problem, but don't expect to get your old card back, according
to Bank One's Stan Lata.
"Bank personnel can't just pop open the ATM and
hand back the card."
For one thing, many ATM owners contract with repair
companies to fix balky machines.
If you're not a customer, branch personnel won't be
able to retrieve your card or issue a replacement, Bank of America's
Bill Raymond says.
"The facts of ATM cards and service is that if
you're not a customer of the bank, we can't know anything that allows
us to identify you. If you're a First Union customer using a Bank
of America ATM, the only data we get is the data on the magnetic
stripe -- information that ensures it's a real card that was issued
properly -- and the PIN, which the ATM immediately encrypts. Even
if we could take the card out of the machine, we couldn't prove
it was yours."
|
