Cash machine ate daughters money.

mrrafs

My daughter raised over £200 for a cancer charity and needed to deposit it into her account. I took her to brixton santander to deposit thecash into a bank account via the machine, into her own account. This was done in two lots. The second lot jammed the rollers in the machine, and we could see a crumpled note twisted round the bar.

We went to see an advisor by the font door, who took down our details and said they would contact us on monday and settle the matter.

They never contacted us, she has gone to the bank repetitively, and we hace spent many, many hours getting pushed around telephone banking. They repetitively say they will get back to us, but never do.

They have a record of the form that the advisor filled in, but no record of a miss-match of funds in their machine. Their only advice is that we should go to the ombudsman. What should I do, where can i go?

Help please.

elsien

How much of it has registered in her bank account?

agrinnall

As you've found it's really not a good idea to deposit cash in external ATMs, if you must do it use one that's inside a branch.

If they have now told you to go to the ombudsman, that's what you should do.

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/

PeacefulWaters

mrrafs wrote: »

My daughter raised over £200 for a cancer charity and needed to deposit it into her account. I took her to brixton santander to deposit thecash into a bank account via the machine, into her own account. This was done in two lots. The second lot jammed the rollers in the machine, and we could see a crumpled note twisted round the bar.

We went to see an advisor by the font door, who took down our details and said they would contact us on monday and settle the matter.

They never contacted us, she has gone to the bank repetitively, and we hace spent many, many hours getting pushed around telephone banking. They repetitively say they will get back to us, but never do.

They have a record of the form that the advisor filled in, but no record of a miss-match of funds in their machine. Their only advice is that we should go to the ombudsman. What should I do, where can i go?

Help please.

Well you could always go to the ombudsman.

Who won't get impressed with their handling of the issue.

Out of interest, why were two deposits made? And how much hasn't reached the account?

Shakin_Steve

By nature, I am a very cynical chap, I don't trust people readily and I try to foresee any mishap before it happens. Hence, I am a belt and braces man, double (or even triple) checking faster payment details, standing orders and, sometimes, losing patience with nosey Parker bank employees on the phone.
I would never give my cash to any kind of machine, I want to look someone in the eye as I hand over my hard earned, and check any receipt they give me.
I used to think I was a miserable, distrustful bastid but the more I read on here, the more I like myself.

mrrafs

The money was put in two lots as its a maximum of £100 per deposit. The second deposit was not registered at all. The ATM(inside the bank building) also took the card when it happened, after they opened up the machine and returned the card, they found no stuck notes.

They finally got back to us this afternoon, claiming that they spent two days investigating and have come to the conclusion that there is not enough evidence.

The last time I went to the ombudsman, it got nowhere because the company in question refused to reply to any of the ombudsman communications!

How can I get copies of the security cameras, to confirm that we did put money in?

Thinking of trying to crowd-fund the money back for the charity with some twitter / face-book action.

I'm seriously disappointed with Santander.

jonesMUFCforever

mrrafs wrote: »

The money was put in two lots as its a maximum of £100 per deposit. The second deposit was not registered at all. The ATM(inside the bank building) also took the card when it happened, after they opened up the machine and returned the card, they found no stuck notes.

They finally got back to us this afternoon, claiming that they spent two days investigating and have come to the conclusion that there is not enough evidence.

The last time I went to the ombudsman, it got nowhere because the company in question refused to reply to any of the ombudsman communications!

How can I get copies of the security cameras, to confirm that we did put money in?

Thinking of trying to crowd-fund the money back for the charity with some twitter / face-book action.

I'm seriously disappointed with Santander.

You cannot make Santander give you copies of the tape unless a court orders it.
Make a formal complaint.
Wait for the reply - if you are not happy you can go to the ombudsman.
It is quite possible that in a busy run up to Christmas that the machine has not been properly balanced yet.

elsien

I'm also wondering whether the machine may have rejected the notes while you were talking to staff and someone's taken them. Not sure if that would show up on a recording or not, but might explain why they're not showing up when the machine was balanced. Or is that something you would have noticed?

PeacefulWaters

There is the possibility that staff have pinched the money when it's been removed from the rollers. The machine would balance in that circumstance because they've made it balance.

Unlikely but not impossible.

As such, it's important that you pursue the complaint. I'd suggest it should ge investigated by somebody outside of the branch environment. If there's a trend of similar missing deposits at that location it would support your case.

Flobberchops

I've worked in branches with similar machines. Putting on my deerstalker cap for a moment, let's explore the possibilities.

0) The trivial option: this whole thing is a work of fiction and/or no second deposit was made. Let's assume this isn't the case.
1) The money went into the machine and
a) Was rejected - taken by either an employee or other customer
b) Was retained, whereupon
i) It credited your daughter's account as it should, or
ii) It was deposited in the machine's "reject" bin as intended in the case of a feed error, or
iii) It became lost elsewhere in the workings.

Resulting:
1a) Should be apparent on a CCTV recording.
1bi) Should have been apparent on your daughter's statement, or at the very least should have showed as a difference when the machine was balanced
1bii) Would have been immediately apparent the next time the machine was serviced, as the mangled notes in the bin would correspond directly to the total and denominations you would have told them about.
1biii) Would imply a really quite gross level of incompetence on Santander's part if they couldn't find the remains of £100 of notes from even a cursory inspection of the innards.

In the last two scenarios there exists the slim possibility of fraud on the bank's part, i.e. an employee taking the retained notes and then claiming they were never there. This is a tempting conclusion to arrive at, but banks internal procedures would make this deliberately difficult to achieve. First, if the machine registered the money being inserted there would be an electronic audit. Secondly, there is often CCTV covering even the internal side of an ATM. Third, replenishing and servicing cash machines is usually a two-person job meaning two employees would have to be in on the fraud. Would two people in relatively cushy, fairly well-paid service sector jobs really gamble the rest of their working lives' employment for the sake of £100 between the two of them? (As stealing from a cash machine would assuredly be instant dismissal and career suicide).

If the machine has been balanced with no discrepancy, thoroughly inspected with no shredded or jammed notes discovered, then a minor (but annoying) miracle has just occurred. The bank would then have to determine, from CCTV among other things, what *probably* happened - and unfortunately, they may end up deciding on my Scenario 0 above. At this point your options would be a) act so indignantly that they decide they'd rather give you £100 than incur reputational damage or b) escalate to the Ombudsman.

For what it's worth I wish you luck and I'd be curious to hear the outcome.

msallen

I work in automated cash handling technology - not ATMs but similar enough to know how any such system would work.

There are (at least) four separate logs available here for the bank to check
- the main account banking application which will log all transactions on an account
- - the application running the ATM which will log all user interactions with the screen/keyboard, and all interactions between itself and the device driver or middleware controlling the cash handling machinery
- - - the devicer driver or middleware will log all communication between itself and the ATM application, and between itself and the physical hardware
- - - - the firmware on the hardware will log all communications between itself and the device driver, along with all the internal byte level commands which drive the moving parts, and also the sensor states after any operation where the (probably) dozens of sensors do not register the expected state following the operation.

Cash does not just go missing.

The bank can tell exactly what the user attempted to do, and how the ATM "generally" reacted. However there may be occasions depending on the particular hardware's design when for example the cash is known to have entered the slot but not reached a subsequent sensor less than a note's length away. In this case the end of the notes could be stuck out of the slot and thus retrievable, or they could be crumpled thus sitting entirely between the sensor and the slot and thus not extractable back out of the slot.

This scenario potentially fits the OP's description as they say they could see the note "twisted round the bar", but in this case the machine would typically go out of service as no subsequent deposits could be made. The bank would know (as the OP may even do if they noticed) whether subsequent deposits occurred without someone having to open the ATM to rectify the situation, or indeed whether the ATM managed to recover itself and reject the notes (albeit perhaps while the OP was talking to the member of staff about).

I cannot believe the bank does not know what happened here. Their response about there not being enough evidence implies to me that either they have not actually investigated this in any depth and are trying to brush it off, or they suspect the OP is trying to defraud them but can't prove who took any returned notes from the slot.