Author Topic: Where do you do your banking?  (Read 19432 times)

clifp

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Re: Where do you do your banking?
« Reply #50 on: February 11, 2015, 12:43:31 AM »
Schwab. Reimbursed ATM fees. Mobile Deposits. Done deal.
+1.
And the feature that they have that I have not seen elsewhere is no foreign transaction fees. Combine that with their worldwide ATM fee reimbursement, and it's the perfect way to get cash while abroad.

Also, they have no account maintenance fees nor minimums.

Plus if you have $1 million or more investment a dedicated team, who's job is to actually find ways of doing what you need done, rather than apologizing while they explain that rules don't allow it.

johnny847

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Re: Where do you do your banking?
« Reply #51 on: February 11, 2015, 12:59:21 AM »
I am not expressing any opinion on the merits of the bank's legal position here.

But as a practical matter, do you want to have to file a lawsuit over a fairly small amount of cash?

I don't want to do that, so I don't deal with bank machines, because I am aware this is something banks do very often, and I don't want to deal with it. I am not just spouting paranoid fear here. Banks actually do this all the time. If that's something you want to deal with, more power to you.

Of course, the reverse can happen too. I had a friend who got $80 when he asked for $20 (i.e. his account was debited for $20 but he got $80 in cash). So maybe over your lifetime, the various problems with the machine will average out. But I just prefer to remove this potential source of stress from my life.
Unless you cite me actual statistics on how often this occurs (not just your or a series of anecdotes), I see no reason to change my behavior (or more generally, why anybody should change their behavior) based on an error that can occur. Errors occur with any system you use. That's guaranteed. If I'm going to avoid using a system because of possible errors, I want to know what error rate we're dealing with. If it's one in say 10,000 cash deposits, I don't mind taking that risk considering I have to go out of my way to a branch with a human teller as opposed to an ATM.  This is especially true considering that I, and I assume most people, rarely do cash deposits these days. For people who do cash deposits on a regular basis, it's more of a concern, but again, it all depends on the actual error rate.

Also, the receipt is irrelevant -- you may be misunderstanding what I am saying. The receipt is evidence that the machine believes you put in a certain amount. It's not evidence that you actually put in that amount, which is what the bank is disputing.
The receipt is absolutely relevant. You seem convinced that some banks, whether maliciously or just out of error, want to "tamper" with your deposit amount after you've made the deposit. The receipt is the only evidence that you have that the bank can't tamper with that you can present to dispute the bank if need be.

johnny847

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Re: Where do you do your banking?
« Reply #52 on: February 11, 2015, 01:17:20 AM »
The receipt is indeed irrelevant to the argument that the bank makes in these cases. The receipt is evidence of what amount was originally credited to your account. However, that is not in dispute. When the bank makes these adjustments, it will openly admit it is an adjustment. The adjustment will usually appear as a separate line on your statement. There is no attempt to conceal it. Your receipt would only prove the original amount, which is not in dispute.

What is in dispute is how much cash you actually deposited into the machine and the receipt does not offer any evidence of that, hence it's irrelevant. If you video taped yourself inserting in the cash, that would be evidence of how much cash you put in.
And again, I'll ask you, if you had to take the bank to court, do you honestly believe that a judge would just completely disregard the fact that you have a receipt stating you deposited what you claim you deposited? The moment the judge uses the receipt as a factor in his or her decision, the receipt becomes relevant.

I could cite to hundreds of forum threads of people complaining about this, but I see no reason to bother. You can search the internet yourself if you want to gauge the frequency.
Searching the internet myself would do absolutely nothing for me in helping me gauge the frequency. Anything posted on the Internet would be self reported. For anyone to be able to establish reliable statistics on ATM cash deposit error rates based on anecdotes posted on the Internet, they would need virtually all people that have experienced this error to report it on the Internet. That's almost certainly not true. And even if it were true, how would they know if (virtually) all cases of ATM cash deposit errors were actually reported?

johnny847

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Re: Where do you do your banking?
« Reply #53 on: February 11, 2015, 01:29:54 AM »
Whether the receipt will be convincing evidence depends on the type of machine and some other factors. With the newer Bank of America machines that make some attempt to read the type of bill, the receipt would probably be somewhat convincing as to the amount, but on most bank machines, they just take the bills on faith and do no verification -- so the receipt means nothing.

You must have also missed the part where this is not about the law. Whether you can win a lawsuit on this topic is irrelevant to what I am saying, but at this point I'm just repeating myself.

Since I have no vested interest in whether you use bank machines, I have no reason to repeat myself anymore.
And I'm saying that I have no reason to believe, unless you can prove otherwise, that the error rate is significant enough that it is worth deciding to go to a branch despite extra hassle over going to an ATM.

I get that you're not talking about the legal issues, you're talking about the hassle of having to go to court over a small issue. But again, I have my doubts that the error rate is high enough for this to actually even be an issue. And if it is, then fine, you take them to court.

When you say they take the bills on faith and do no verification - what do you mean exactly? Do you mean the ATM doesn't even count the bills? Or something else entirely?

johnny847

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Re: Where do you do your banking?
« Reply #54 on: February 11, 2015, 01:51:07 AM »
I am not an expert on the various models of bank machines, but there are a lot of levels of how much verification they do of the bill. The classic bank machines (and the only kind that exist in Canada) take your deposit purely on faith. You just input the amount on the keypad and the machine trusts you. With those machines, the receipt is literally no evidence at all of how much you put in, since the machine makes no attempt to count it and just trusts you.

In the USA, those "pure faith" machines still exist as well, but there are also ones that count the bills for you, but it's usually still subject to human verification later. How much verification the machines does depends on the exact model but that's a bit outside of my expertise.
Okay now I understand your trepidation and why you're saying the ATM receipt is irrelevant. The only ATMs I've ever used actually count the bills. I was confused to why you thought the ATM receipt was irrelevant because it didn't even occur to me that there exist ATMs that don't count the amount of bills you deposit (and that seems incredibly dumb to me! Why would you design an ATM that way?)

Sorry I wasted your time with this - the idea of an ATM just taking your deposit amount on pure faith was so ludicrous to me that I didn't even think that's what you meant. And I agree, I would never use an ATM that only operated on faith - that's just stupid design.

ShoulderThingThatGoesUp

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Re: Where do you do your banking?
« Reply #55 on: February 11, 2015, 05:46:43 AM »
Schwab. Reimbursed ATM fees. Mobile Deposits. Done deal.
+1.
And the feature that they have that I have not seen elsewhere is no foreign transaction fees. Combine that with their worldwide ATM fee reimbursement, and it's the perfect way to get cash while abroad.

Also, they have no account maintenance fees nor minimums.

Plus if you have $1 million or more investment a dedicated team, who's job is to actually find ways of doing what you need done, rather than apologizing while they explain that rules don't allow it.

Even if you just have $200k invested, they find a way to make things work. When I sold my other house, which we owned free and clear, I gave the title company the wrong wire number to get the money to Schwab - I sent it to their direct deposit number rather than their wire transfers number. I called them up, explained the problem (and that I was going to invest most of the money through them), and the next day the money was in my account. No extra forms, no bullshit, no rules, just service.

pancakes

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Re: Where do you do your banking?
« Reply #56 on: February 11, 2015, 07:26:16 AM »
I'm with ING in Australia.

It is a pretty good deal at the moment as far as banks here go. Not the best interest rate going on the high interest savings account but very close to it. No ATM fees no matter which ATM I use (ING don't have their own branded ATMS), 50c reward payment for taking cash out at the supermarket rather than at an ATM and 2% cash back on paywave transactions with visa debit. Also no fees for anything.

They also rewarded me with a $250 clothing voucher when a friend signed up.

The down side is that there are no branches and it is all online. So far this hasn't been an issue for me.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!