As a reader of Consumerist, Shawn knew that he should probably stay away from mega-bank and Worst Company in America 2013 Final Four contender Bank of America. Yet his non-BoA lender of choice sold his mortgage to…well, guess who? He moved his other banking there for the sake of convenience, and that’s when he walked up to an ATM and conducted the fateful transaction. [More]
atms
New Branch Promotion Turns ATMs Into No-Lose Slot Machines
By 8.30.12
How can you spice up a routine visit to the ATM? Easthampton Savings Bank in Massachusetts is promoting a new branch by turning its ATM into a sort of no-lose slot machine. They call it the “ATM Gone Mad,” because sometimes it will dispense $50 bills in place of the normal $20 bills. Cute promo. One local blogger finds it amusing that this is going on around the same time that the nearby city of Springfield is considering a downtown casino proposal from MGM Grand. All of the fun of gambling, none of the risk of financial ruin. But what’s the fun if there’s no chance of destroying your family’s future? [More]
Bank Of America Customers Now Have Fewer ATMs To Use
By 7.23.12
If you’re a Bank of America customer and you sensed that the number of BofA ATMs out there had shrunk in recent months, you were not hallucinating. The company says it decided to pull 1,536 — nearly 1-in-10 — of its ATMs out of use in an effort to cut costs. [More]
Olympic Tourists To Compete In Epic Line-Standing Competitions At London’s ATMs
By 7.20.12
What’s more annoying than someone calling it an ATM machine? A super long line at the ATM, which is going to be the reality for many tourists cruising into London for the Olympic games. Officials are warning tourists of epic queues, advising travelers to bring their own British pounds instead of trying to access ATMs. [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]
How Does Eliminating Services 'Better Serve' Me?
By 5.30.12
Michael noticed a sign at the TD Bank ATM informing customers that postage stamps would no longer be available at that location. Aw, too bad. It’s fair if a business wants to discontinue a service because it’s unprofitable or problematic to offer. What annoys customers and insults their intelligence is when the change is spun as some kind of favor to customers. [More]
No, This Shady-Looking ATM Repair Is Totally Not A Card Skimmer
By 5.29.12
John has read our previous posts on ATM skimmers tacked on machines by crooks, and knows what to watch out for. If you see card slots and other components that don’t quite seem to match the rest of the machine and seem tacked on, that’s a big warning sign. So when he saw this rather sketchy-looking addition to a machine, he thought it might be a skimming device. When he called up the bank, he learned that it wasn’t: apparently, they just did kind of a crappy repair job. [More]
Are Bank Tellers Going The Way Of The Dinosaur?
By 5.15.12
Between ATMs, online banking and smartphone apps, the average person can now go months, possibly years, without ever having to go into a bank and interact with a teller. And a number of financial institutions are continuing to looking for ways to remove tellers from the equation — or at least move the tellers somewhere that they aren’t taking up expensive real estate. [More]
Meet The Card Skimmer That Might Make You Think Twice About Ever Using An ATM Again
By 4.26.12
Once upon a time, identity thieves hoping to capture victims’ debit and credit card information had to resort to clunky, sometimes obvious skimming devices. But as consumers have grown more savvy about how to identify a possible skimmer, the devices have evolved to a point where some are all but impossible to detect by the naked eye. [More]
Have You Found An ATM With Minimum Deposits?
By 4.26.12
When Paul’s wife brought a small check to deposit at a Chase bank ATM, she didn’t expect to have the machine spit it back out. Deposits, you see, have a $15 minimum. Wait, isn’t that the point of using an ATM to deposit checks – not having to waste a teller’s time on an $8 transaction? [More]
ATM Company Testing Out Displaying Ads Instead Of Charging Fees
By 12.1.11
ATM fees are the bane of anyone who hates flushing $2 or $3 down the drain just to gain access to their own money. Going off the idea that any money-loving American would rather see an ad displayed during their transaction than pay an obligatory fee, one ATM company is conducting an interesting experiment. [More]
ATM Gobbles Up Customer's Deposit, Bank Employees Shrug
By 11.10.11
$376 isn’t a lot of money compared to the amounts that flow through banks on a daily basis. But it is a lot of money to reader Craig, who deposited that amount of cash on Monday at a BBVA Compass ATM. The machine gobbled up his money during the deposit, and no one is quite sure where the cash went. It’s not in his account, he knows that much. [More]
Bank Of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, Visa, MasterCard Sued Over ATM Fees
By 10.19.11
Have you ever glared angrily at the ATM, knowing that you’re going to be saddled with fees and wishing you could sue everyone involved? Well, it looks like more than one person has followed through on this idea. [More]
What It's Like For A Blind Man To Use An ATM For The First Time
By 9.13.11
Have you ever been waiting for the ATM to dispense your monies and seen that little headjack for blind people and wondered, hey, how does a blind person use an ATM? This video shows what happens when Tommy Edison, a blind man, uses the ATM for the first time. It takes him 11 minutes. [More]
Baguette ATM Hits Paris Streets
By 8.16.11
A new vending machine just hit the streets of Paris dispensing freshly baked baguettes. [More]
Opt In To Overdraft Protection Right At The ATM
By 7.29.11
ATMs exist for routine banking transactions…deposits, withdrawals, balance inquiries, opting out of overdraft protection. Wait, what? GitEmSteveDave noticed, but didn’t test, this option on a Sovereign Bank ATM. “I wonder how many people hit the button by accident and end up giving their rights up,” he writes. Convenient, or dangerous? [More]
Just Because You're Illiterate Doesn't Mean You Shouldn't Be Able To Use The ATM
By 7.11.11
If you’ve ever found yourself trying to get money from an ATM that doesn’t want to display its menus in English, you know it can be aggravating. But imagine what it must be like for someone with no understanding of any written language. Now there are new ATMs being created for use in developing regions with lower literacy rates. [More]
ATM Can Tell If You're Lying
By 6.9.11
Leave it to the Russians. Their biggest retail bank, Sberbank, is testing out a new kind of ATM that has a built-in lie detector. [More]
