What would you do if you were withdrawing cash from the ATM outside your bank, and received a note pleading for help along with the receipt? That scenario played out in Texas this week as a man sent to change a lock behind a Bank of America ATM instead locked himself inside without his phone, and had to plead for help from what we’re guessing were some very confused bank customers. [More]
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Wells Fargo Customers Won’t Need A Card To Get Cash At ATMs Anymore
By 3.23.17
Can’t be bothered to carry a debit card, but need some cash on the go? Not a problem for Wells Fargo customers with smartphones, as the bank is rolling out its cardless technology at all of its roughly 13,000 cash machines. [More]
My Bank Overdrafted My Account By Putting Two Holds On One Deposit; Doesn’t Care
By 10.25.16 — Updated: 10.31.16
Imagine that you do everything you can to avoid overdrafting your bank account, only to find that your bank has gone ahead and pushed you into the red — and that it doesn’t really care. [More]
Woman Returns $380 Bank ATM Spat Out Of Deposit Slot Instead Of Pocketing It
By 10.6.16 — Updated: 3.30.17
When there’s free money involved, there’s always going to be the temptation to take it, even if you know it’s not right. But yet another good consumer has done an honorable deed, this time by returning almost $400 that unexpectedly shot out of a drive-thru bank ATM. [More]
Average ATM Fees Hit Record High Of $4.52, Up 21% Over 5 Years
By 10.5.15
If you think you’re being bled dry more quickly by ATM fees, you’re probably not imagining things. A new survey shows that the cost of getting money from an out-of-network ATM has risen 21% over the last five years and the national average is now higher than $4.50 per transaction. [More]
Thief Commandeers Forklift In Failed ATM Heist
By 9.30.15
ATMs tend to weigh quite a bit, that may be why would-be thieves often rely on the help of big machinery when attempting to make off with one of the money dispensing apparatuses — or its contents. Once such case occurred early this morning in North Dakota where ne’er-do-well(s) commandeered a forklift and tried to pilfer the contents of a Wells Fargo cash machine. [More]
Appeals Court Breathes New Life Into ATM Fee Price-Fixing Suit
By 8.4.15
More than two years after a federal court dismissed price-fixing lawsuits against Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, a federal appeals court has revived the cases that involve allegations that these banks and payment networks illegally and anticompetitively established fee levels for out-of-network ATM use. [More]
Police: Men With ATM In Back Of Their Pickup Truck Can’t Remember Where “Scrap Metal” Came From
By 7.13.15
Because it seems unlikely that large chunks of metal and plastic fall from the sky and land in the back of pickup trucks without anyone realizing it, police have charged two Florida men with the theft of an ATM, alleging that the suspects used a stolen backhoe to remove the cash machine from its rightful home. [More]
Thief’s Attempt To Blast ATM Open Literally Backfires
By 12.30.14
Recently here at Consumerist, we’ve reviewed some very unsuccessful ways to open up ATMs and get at the money inside. Smashing the machine with a forklift, for example, is not a useful method. Neither is pouring acid on it. Now we have a new addition to the list: you also cannot gain access to money inside a cash machine with an explosive. [More]
Teens Hack ATM, Then Show Bank How Easily They Did It
By 6.10.14
Like something out of an ’80s movie starring a precocious teen with a computer his absentee parents bought him for his birthday, a pair of teenagers in Winnipeg used an ATM operator’s manual and some good old-fashioned guesswork to gain unauthorized access to a Bank of Montreal ATM — and then told the bank about what they’d figured out. [More]
3 Things Your ATM Could Soon Be Doing Besides Dispensing Cash
By 6.2.14
Almost all of the more than 400,000 ATMs in the U.S. are used for the most basic of banking purposes — withdrawing cash and making deposits. But fewer people are using cash and it’s now often easier to deposit a check (in those rare instances when you receive one) via smartphone than it is to trek to the ATM. In order for the machines to survive (and someday play their part in the inevitable robot uprising), they must diversify. [More]
Bitcoin Continues To Take Over: First U.S. ATMs Open In Seattle, Austin This Month
By 2.18.14
The wait is over. You can finally swap bitcoin for cash at the ATM. Okay, you can only do it at two ATMs in the United State, but it’s still a big step for the digital currency. [More]
Cops On The Lookout For Guy With An ATM That Doesn’t Belong To Him
By 4.9.13
Anyone living in North Carolina — if your friend lets you use his “personal” ATM, perhaps in the living room or backyard, it’s probably not his. We say that because police are currently on the hunt for a suspect who first stole an excavator from a construction site and then used it to boost a 2,000-pound ATM nearby. [More]
Beating Up The ATM That Ate Your Card Will Get You A Felony Charge Instead Of Cash
By 3.13.13
We’ve seen all kinds of seemingly minor acts turn into what’s termed “a pretty freaking big deal” just by a simple twist of events. Like admitting to past crimes, taking out too much anger on an ATM can earn you a felony. Police in New Hampshire say it wasn’t a simple kick that got one ATM customer in trouble, but a major mess-up. [More]
Whoever Stole A Jukebox From Hooters Probably Mad It Dispenses Sweet Tunes Instead Of Cash
By 2.22.13 — Updated: 2.25.13
On one hand, the two men suspected of boosting a jukebox from a Hooters restaurant in San Diego are probably bummed if they thought it was an ATM. But on the other — how sweet would it be to have your own jukebox? Well, if it hadn’t been stolen. Because stealing is wrong, even if you think you’re stealing one thing and it’s actually something else. [More]
Visa, FICO Warn Card Issuers Of More Sophisticated ATM Crimes
By 1.24.13
Card skimmers have been around for a while. And while they may have gotten smaller and harder to detect, the people using the skimmed data were generally limited to how much cash they could pull out of victim’s accounts in a day. And so a new breed of criminal has figured out a way to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from ATMs. [More]
If All You’ve Got Is $17 In Your Account New ATMs Will Oblige With $1 And $5 Bills
By 1.17.13
For anyone who’s ever had to take out $40 at an ATMwhen all you really needed was $25 and maybe your account balance is low enough that the higher amount causes a sticky situation, get excited. There are reportedly hundreds of new ATMs dotting the country that now dispense $1 and $5 bills so you can grab exact change when you need it. [More]
Do We Still Need Fee-Disclosure Placards On ATMs?
By 7.10.12
Back in 1999, the Electronic Fund Transfer Act began requiring that ATMs provide two separate disclosures of associated fees — one on the ATM screen before the transaction is confirmed and a second placard placed in a conspicuous location on the ATM itself. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed an amendment to the EFTA that would eliminate the placard requirement. [More]
