Monday, September 29, 2008

Going Without A Slip: New ATMs

I love the new Chase ATMs where you don't need to use an envelope or a deposit slip-- they make depositing checks, and even cash so easy and fast!

The first time I used one, I was a bit confused. I'd spent several minutes hunting around the bank lobby for envelopes and was really annoyed that they seemed to have run out. Finally someone from the bank told me the machines had been switched over and that I didn't need one!

All you need to do to make a deposit is endorse the back of your check and feed it into a slot when instructed. Sometimes the ATM uses OCR to recognize the amount of the check and says "The amount you have deposited is $40. Is this correct?" If not, it asks you to enter the deposit amount. You have the option to have your ATM receipt include a miniature scanned image of the deposited check, which I thought was really cool!

Last week, I took these ATMs one step further-- remember how I was talking about having all that money in my wallet? The wad of cash included a $100 bill and a $50 bill. I spend cash very rarely, and only on tiny purchases like buying coffee or lunch. I was inwardly groaning in anticipation of being given a hard time by a cashier when trying to break such a large bill.

(As an aside, why is that? It still seems like no one wants to change anything larger than a $20, but you'd think we'd had enough inflation over the years for $50s and $100s to be more commonly in use. And you'd think they'd get rid of pennies, and perhaps even nickels too, but we Americans seem to just love our small denominations.)

Anyway, while depositing another check at the ATM I decided it might be a good idea to just dump my $100 and $50 bills, since I didn't really need to be carrying so much cash. I stuck the $100 in the slot, and bingo, the machine recognized it as $100. But then I tried to stick the $50 in, and after several attempts, it was not being accepted. It was one of the old $50 bills, and I guess the machines are programmed to accept only the new design. At least I hope that is the case-- I'll be really pissed if I ended up with a counterfeit $50 after putting the dinner bill on my credit card!

And that would be the subject for a whole other post: what do you do if your friend unknowingly pays you with counterfeit money!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bank of America has had similar ATMs in my area for a little while now, and I agree that they are very cool; I also feel significantly safer depositing checks and money into the ATM, so I definitely consider it a great improvement.

In my experience, the Bank of America ATMs have no problem accepting old bills. Maybe your bill was just not readable for some reason (crumpled)?

Anonymous said...

To be honest, I would just use the counterfeit at other stores.

Caleb said...

I've worked in fast food and also as a waiter and I've never given anyone grief about trying to pay with a 50 or 100. Occassionally it's slightly inconvenient if you don't have a bunch of 20's in your drawer and have to get a manager to break it with money from the safe (but that usually only happens at the beginning of the shift). Cash is cash in my opinion, and I'm not going to treat a customer rudely for trying to pay his/her bill. It's all about customer service.

Shawnna said...

I used to work at the mall and during the christmas rush a woman gave me a $100. I used one of those pens that tests the paper/ink to see if it's real, and it wasn't. She had gotten it from her bank, and even the cops had a hard time figuring out how it was fake. It seemed real in every respect except the paper seemed just a little thicker than it should be. It was crazy. I have no idea if that woman ever got her real $100 from the bank.

Shawnna said...

Oh, and while Americans don't seem to like large currency, Europeans don't like when you try to pay with a paper bill: they prefer you use the smaller coins and they'll give you some serious attitude if you try to hand them at 20 note for a €5 purchase, so this phenomenon isn't isolated in the states.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, one of those machines ate a $2000 check of mine (sucked it in and acted like nothing happened) and I had to fight with Chase for a month to get them to do something about it. Needless to say, I'll be going to the teller from now on.

Anonymous said...

The ATMs at 7-11 are paperless too. I was actually really scared to deposit a check without an envelope, but it worked, and the copy of the check on the receipt was cool. I would be nervous to just stick cash in there, but I never have extra cash to deposit. It is convenient if you do get a bunch of cash for something, though.

-Tasha

Anonymous said...

well...if you confront the friend, they might deny it and say they didn't know it was a counterfeit bill.

but if they are your friend, why would they pay with a counterfeit bill, but probably because they were going to pay the restaurant cash but not knowing you were going to pay the whole bill by credit card, the counterfeit bill went to the you instead of the restaurant.

if you had a counterfeit bill, what would you do with it? i guess, i would probably want to use it to get rid of it. but that's wrong to pass it along. so i am not sure.

Anonymous said...

I once got a counterfeit 500 rupee note from an ATM in Kashmir, India. I never noticed until I was trying to take a taxi to the airport in New Delhi, and found that not a single rickshaw driver would make me change (the fare was only 100 rupees.) Unfortunately, it was the only bill I had left and I was running late to catch my flight home. After dozens of tries I managed to talk a driver into it by convincing him that maybe he could dupe someone into taking it, and then it would be worth five times the fare.

Anonymous said...

I use Chase too, I always endorse the back of my check with instructions that it can be deposited only to account # XXXX. When my check got swallowed up without being deposited I was easily able to get credited by Chase. I advise doing the same!

Anonymous said...

In case you are all curious about the counterfeit pens they don't work very well. About 12% of the time and have more false positives than anything. All they do is look for is there is starch in the paper. Real "greenbacks" are printed on linen based paper. The pens are looking to see if the counterfeit is printed on regular old "computer" paper. A human just by looking at their money, because they see a lot of it in their lifetime, is a much better. counterfeit detector.