Bank of Montreal ATM glitch
April 6, 2017 9:00 AM Subscribe
A Bank of Montreal ATM swallowed my money and gave no receipt or record. Has this happened to anyone else?
Twelve days ago I drove up to a BMO ATM and deposited 12 cheques. They have a new system where you don't need an envelope--the machine takes the cheques, asks you to confirm a couple of amounts, then gives you a receipt with pics of all the cheques. It has worked perfectly in the past, but on this particular Saturday it gave back five of the cheques, and the monitor text said it could not process them, despite them being no different from any of the cheques I have deposited in the last few months. All good, readable cheques from good clients. I tried to re-deposit the five cheques without success, then tried to cancel the whole transaction to get back all 12 cheques, again without success. Only the last five came back. So the ATM kept seven cheques and gave me no receipt or record of the transaction. The bank interior had just closed, so I went back Monday and explained all this to a teller, gave her the five cheques the machine returned, and asked her to deposit them. She checked the ATM for the missing ones, but all deposits had been sent by courier to the head office. Several days later there was no deposit in my account and no sign of the missing seven cheques. I then told the story to the assistant manager, who said he would get to the bottom of the problem. Ten days later no news and no deposit so I phoned and left a stern voicemail, saying that I have been a good customer for twenty years, and I expected the money to be in my account. He had the teller phone me again, and she said that an ATM tech had examined the machine and found nothing amiss, and nothing like this has happened before. She also said she had misunderstood my request to deposit the five cheques she had in her possession. Yesterday I emailed the assistant manager my backup photos of all the cheques. Still no deposit today. I have lots of money in my account, and have been a perfect customer, so it seems totally farfetched for them to think that I would defraud them for this small amount. So my question to MetaFilter is, have any of you experienced a similar transaction, where no record of a deposit was given? I know they will find the cheques eventually, but it seems odd that I would be the only person who has experienced this.
Twelve days ago I drove up to a BMO ATM and deposited 12 cheques. They have a new system where you don't need an envelope--the machine takes the cheques, asks you to confirm a couple of amounts, then gives you a receipt with pics of all the cheques. It has worked perfectly in the past, but on this particular Saturday it gave back five of the cheques, and the monitor text said it could not process them, despite them being no different from any of the cheques I have deposited in the last few months. All good, readable cheques from good clients. I tried to re-deposit the five cheques without success, then tried to cancel the whole transaction to get back all 12 cheques, again without success. Only the last five came back. So the ATM kept seven cheques and gave me no receipt or record of the transaction. The bank interior had just closed, so I went back Monday and explained all this to a teller, gave her the five cheques the machine returned, and asked her to deposit them. She checked the ATM for the missing ones, but all deposits had been sent by courier to the head office. Several days later there was no deposit in my account and no sign of the missing seven cheques. I then told the story to the assistant manager, who said he would get to the bottom of the problem. Ten days later no news and no deposit so I phoned and left a stern voicemail, saying that I have been a good customer for twenty years, and I expected the money to be in my account. He had the teller phone me again, and she said that an ATM tech had examined the machine and found nothing amiss, and nothing like this has happened before. She also said she had misunderstood my request to deposit the five cheques she had in her possession. Yesterday I emailed the assistant manager my backup photos of all the cheques. Still no deposit today. I have lots of money in my account, and have been a perfect customer, so it seems totally farfetched for them to think that I would defraud them for this small amount. So my question to MetaFilter is, have any of you experienced a similar transaction, where no record of a deposit was given? I know they will find the cheques eventually, but it seems odd that I would be the only person who has experienced this.
Response by poster: Update: The full amount has just been deposited in my account since I posted this. Maybe someone at BMO reads MetaFilter.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:24 AM on April 6, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:24 AM on April 6, 2017 [8 favorites]
Two weeks of bank business days is about the time frame Id expect a not terribly organized bank to get everything to coporate, corporate to figure out the problem, and fix it.
The envelope free deposit ATM being new strikes me as odd... I'm pretty sure Chase has had it for roughly a decade in my big USA City. So I'm assuming in your case BMO had a rare error and the local tellers weren't fully trained on it.
posted by Jacen at 10:37 AM on April 6, 2017
The envelope free deposit ATM being new strikes me as odd... I'm pretty sure Chase has had it for roughly a decade in my big USA City. So I'm assuming in your case BMO had a rare error and the local tellers weren't fully trained on it.
posted by Jacen at 10:37 AM on April 6, 2017
Anecdotally, there are a few glitches with the new ATMs which they're trying to work out. In my case, I did the drive-thru ATM to withdraw some cash, punched in my PIN, asked to withdraw, and then -- the machine shut down and swallowed my card and told me to go inside for help. And of course, this was after hours. And of course, my bank account was technically maybe still open to the outside world. And of course, there were people behind me waiting, and what the hell do I do now?
In the end, it was all resolved without any hassle, only with massive inconvenience and panic to me. But in the course of our discussion, they said they were having some problems with the new machines. Nothing systemic, just hiccups. Who knows?
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:20 AM on April 6, 2017
In the end, it was all resolved without any hassle, only with massive inconvenience and panic to me. But in the course of our discussion, they said they were having some problems with the new machines. Nothing systemic, just hiccups. Who knows?
posted by Capt. Renault at 11:20 AM on April 6, 2017
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posted by hydra77 at 9:13 AM on April 6, 2017