Weird ATM experience..

scamander

Hi all,

Hope someone else here might be able to throw some light on this...

Stopped at a Sainsburys' ATM this morning and put my card in. The PIN entry screen flashed up and then skipped to the "how much do you want to withdraw?" screen.

I cancelled and removed my card as this seemed very odd. Anyone else have this experience?

fwor

Not the exact same experience, but I've seen similar things that probably aren't as sinister as they might seem.

The ATM system (and in particular the network that supports it) is pretty archaic and unreliable, so ATMs themselves are often programmed to "skip ahead" if waiting for a response from a central system. So, for example, if you put in an incorrect PIN, many terminals will proceed to offer you the subsequent screens - for example asking how much you want - until they get a response. But of course they won't go as far as actually giving you real money or account info until the response is positive.

It may be that this ATM knew that its network interface was down, and was gathering more info about what you wanted in anticipation of it becoming available again.

scamander

Cheers for the response. I thought that too - except I used the same organisation's ATM further up the road and all was fine. I imagine if I had selected to withdraw money it would have re-prompted me for a PIN. Wasn't going to try and find out though!