1. A friend came across £100 at the auto-teller. She took it inside the bank. No-one claimed it, she got the £100.

2. My wife, some years ago, walked away from the auto-teller instead of picking up the £200 she just requested. When she realised she went into the bank and asked what would happen. She was told if no-one had taken the money it would be sucked back into the machine. So she asked if the money had been sucked back into the machine. "We can not tell yet, but come back in a month" was the reply.

I do not understand the separation of data between the machine and the bank, perhaps between the branch and the machine, but the branch should be able to call somewhere central and find out. Especially for the first example, the customer who is £100 down must have been the previous customer to my friend, how hard would that have been to find out?

Don't assume the bank has any control or interest in the ATM. Most are
operated by a separate company or contractor.

On 18/02/2017 16:44, misterroy wrote:
1. A friend came across £100 at the auto-teller. She took it inside the bank. No-one claimed it, she got the £100.

2. My wife, some years ago, walked away from the auto-teller instead of picking up the £200 she just requested. When she realised she went into the bank and asked what would happen. She was told if no-one had taken the money it would be sucked back into the machine. So she asked if the money had been sucked back into the machine. "We can not tell yet, but come back in a month" was the reply.

I do not understand the separation of data between the machine and the bank, perhaps between the branch and the machine, but the branch should be able to call somewhere central and find out. Especially for the first example, the customer who is £100 down must have been the previous customer to my friend, how hard would that have been to find out?


Apparently the Japanese are very honest when it come to finding money.
People hand any money they find to the police. But if the money is not
claimed, then it goes to the finder. Someone got something like £700,000
(Moneybox programme on R4 today.)

--
Michael Chare

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A friend of mine found a purse containing £70 in notes, some coins, and no means of identifying the owner, so took it to the Police Station and handed it in as Found Property. 3 (or 6) months later, she got a letter telling her that the purse had not been claimed, and she could collect it from the Police Station. When the desk officer brought out the purse, it was found to be empty, so the officers present had a whip-round to replace the £70!

The machines are often run by a third party, Link or some other load of
inept people who are contracted by several banks usually.
Most of these machines if they are not brand new run on windows XP embedded
and point of sale ready, and I suspect thesoftware is also quite old.
Brian

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Blind user, so no pictures please!
"misterroy" wrote in message
...
1. A friend came across £100 at the auto-teller. She took it inside the
bank. No-one claimed it, she got the £100.

2. My wife, some years ago, walked away from the auto-teller instead of
picking up the £200 she just requested. When she realised she went into the
bank and asked what would happen. She was told if no-one had taken the money
it would be sucked back into the machine. So she asked if the money had been
sucked back into the machine. "We can not tell yet, but come back in a
month" was the reply.

I do not understand the separation of data between the machine and the bank,
perhaps between the branch and the machine, but the branch should be able to
call somewhere central and find out. Especially for the first example, the
customer who is £100 down must have been the previous customer to my friend,
how hard would that have been to find out?

In article ,
misterroy wrote:
She was told if no-one had taken the money it would be sucked back into
the machine.

Really? Never heard that one before. Can anyone confirm it happens?

--
*One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Sun, 19 Feb 2017 12:48:01 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
misterroy wrote:
She was told if no-one had taken the money it would be sucked back into
the machine.

Really? Never heard that one before. Can anyone confirm it happens?

Happened to me many years ago , must have been shortly after banks
started reciprical arrangements with each other. I was with Nat West
and I think it was a Midland machine . It was laid out differently to
the NW one and the cash slot wasn't in the position I was used to with
the cash silently appearing in a position I was not looking at,
possibly Sun glare was making it difficult to see as well.
Just as I noticed the notes sitting there they were drawn back in .
Enquiring within the branch they said once the incident could the.
verified the amount would be credited back .
No idea how they did it, perhaps a receipt gets dropped internally
into the hopper the returned notes get dropped in when it occurs.

G.Harman

wrote in message
...
On Sun, 19 Feb 2017 12:48:01 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
misterroy wrote:
She was told if no-one had taken the money it would be sucked back into
the machine.

Really? Never heard that one before. Can anyone confirm it happens?

Happened to me many years ago , must have been shortly after banks
started reciprical arrangements with each other. I was with Nat West
and I think it was a Midland machine . It was laid out differently to
the NW one and the cash slot wasn't in the position I was used to with
the cash silently appearing in a position I was not looking at,
possibly Sun glare was making it difficult to see as well.
Just as I noticed the notes sitting there they were drawn back in .
Enquiring within the branch they said once the incident could the.
verified the amount would be credited back .
No idea how they did it, perhaps a receipt gets dropped internally
into the hopper the returned notes get dropped in when it occurs.

I would have thought that it's easy to detect whether any of the wad of
notes has been removed, and if the wad is intact they can credit the money
without any human intervention. The difficulty is if *some* of the notes are
returned, because you manage to grab the top note(s) and the rest get sucked
back in. Then they need human intervention (with a receipt slip or something
similar) to say "there should be £x here, but some notes were taken so check
how much was returned". At least then they don't have to manually check
every return, only the partial ones.

On 19 Feb 2017 12:51:52 GMT, Huge wrote:

On 2017-02-19, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
misterroy wrote:
She was told if no-one had taken the money it would be sucked back into
the machine.

Really? Never heard that one before. Can anyone confirm it happens?

Yes I can and yes it does.

Me too. Probably the second time I had used an ATM. I think I went
into the branch and they checked it straight away. The note concerned
was crumpled.

On Sun, 19 Feb 2017 13:12:58 -0000, NY wrote:

I would have thought that it's easy to detect whether any of the wad of
notes has been removed, and if the wad is intact they can credit the
money without any human intervention. The difficulty is if *some* of the
notes are returned, because you manage to grab the top note(s) and the
rest get sucked back in. Then they need human intervention (with a
receipt slip or something similar) to say "there should be £x here, but
some notes were taken so check how much was returned".

I think the whole thing could be automagic. No cash should come back
in. If any does, it counts what has and flags the banking system that
account X should be credited amount Y. Machine counting of notes
isn't difficult.

Though TBH I'd expect when a machine is refilled that the amount left
(if any...) in a machine is correct according to how much it was
loaded with, thinks it has given out and how much has been sucked
back. I'd expect anything sucked back to go into a seperate box
rather than the dispensing cassette.

--
Cheers
Dave.

In article l.net,
Dave Liquorice wrote:
I think the whole thing could be automagic. No cash should come back
in. If any does, it counts what has and flags the banking system that
account X should be credited amount Y. Machine counting of notes
isn't difficult.

Wouldn't it be tricky to retrieve the notes once dispensed and count them
again too? I'd say it would be easier to just plonk them in a special
container for non collected. Not like it's going to happen often. Or
rather, not with me. ;-)

--
*Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Mon, 20 Feb 2017 15:30:24 +0000 (GMT), Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Wouldn't it be tricky to retrieve the notes once dispensed and count
them again too?

Well the retrivel doesn't seem to be a problem. Counting isn't
difficult with the florescent markings.

I'd say it would be easier to just plonk them in a special container for
non collected.

I said I expected that to happen. And it wouldn't be that difficult
to drop a printed bit of paper on top giving details of which
transaction the cash came from and act as a seperator.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On 20/02/2017 15:04, Dave Liquorice wrote:

I think the whole thing could be automagic. No cash should come back
in. If any does, it counts what has and flags the banking system that
account X should be credited amount Y. Machine counting of notes
isn't difficult.

Counting is done on the outgoing route. Adding a mechanism to count
things going back in might require more equipment. Returning notes would
also need to be processed to determine their denomination. I doubt if
the machines have any ability to do this, they're probably loaded with
each denomination in a separate section. I suspect returned notes are
just dumped to a separate container to be dealt with manually.

--
Mike Clarke

On Monday, 20 February 2017 16:10:56 UTC, Mike Clarke wrote:
On 20/02/2017 15:04, Dave Liquorice wrote:

I think the whole thing could be automagic. No cash should come back
in. If any does, it counts what has and flags the banking system that
account X should be credited amount Y. Machine counting of notes
isn't difficult.

Counting is done on the outgoing route. Adding a mechanism to count
things going back in might require more equipment. Returning notes would
also need to be processed to determine their denomination. I doubt if
the machines have any ability to do this, they're probably loaded with
each denomination in a separate section. I suspect returned notes are
just dumped to a separate container to be dealt with manually.

--
Mike Clarke

Just before xmas I was standing outside the santander ATM at college and there was a memeber of bank staff helping a student deposit £3,000 in cash into the ATM vai an envolope, seemed to be taking ages.

On 18/02/2017 22:30, Jethro_uk wrote:

I told my friend to keep the letter in case he ever had another problem.
In those days the SOP was "our machines are infallible", so a letter
admitting otherwise would have been useful.

ISTR a case not long ago of bank staff loading the note feeders
incorrectly (probably 20s into the 10 slot) so that people got double
their money.

On 22/02/2017 09:02, Chris Bartram wrote:
On 18/02/2017 22:30, Jethro_uk wrote:

I told my friend to keep the letter in case he ever had another problem.
In those days the SOP was "our machines are infallible", so a letter
admitting otherwise would have been useful.

ISTR a case not long ago of bank staff loading the note feeders
incorrectly (probably 20s into the 10 slot) so that people got double
their money.

I can see how that might go wrong in the USA where all their notes are
the same size, but in the UK I'd have expected the physical size of the
note carriers to prevent fitting a £20 cassette in a £10 slot.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On Wed, 22 Feb 2017 10:38:02 +0000, Martin Brown wrote:

I can see how that might go wrong in the USA where all their notes are
the same size, but in the UK I'd have expected the physical size of the
note carriers to prevent fitting a £20 cassette in a £10 slot.