THAT isn't supposed to happen.

[jbsegal]

So there I am, in the main Schrafft's Factory building, at the BoA atm, trying to get money to buy lunch.

The transaction goes smoothly until the door opens to dispense my cash, at which point the system powers off.

A moment or 2 later, the power comes back and the system starts rebooting. OS/2 Warp. Who knew?

During this amazingly slow reboot, I'm on the phone with BoA, getting hung up on 2x and finally finishing a conversation on the 3rd try, wherein they say "talk to your bank and have them contest the transfer if indeed it went through." (At the end of the reboot, the system spits out the receipt for my transaction, which it certainly THINKS went through.)

I call my bank. They say "we don't have any real-time communication between us and remote banks whose ATMs you might be using. This transaction, if it really DID happen, won't post til Saturday. If it does post, come in and dispute it."

So who KNOWS what my balance currently is...

And on top of all this, I have no cash with which to buy lunch.

Comments

[fidgetmonster.livejournal.com]

Strange--I've heard someone on the phone w/--at the time--BankBoston in a similar situation and BankBoston said "Oh don't worry! We can tell exactly how much money gets dispensed, even if your receipt says otherwise." Now, one more reason to avoid BoA. Hope the dispute process isn't a pain for you.

[skreeky]

From my various unhappy interactions with banks, I have learned to start cc'ing the MA Attourney General on communications as soon as it seems things aren't going your way. That little cc line works wonders.

[dancingdeer.livejournal.com]

Sucks. Did you at least eat that half-sandwich? It's better than nothing.
Borrow from a co-worker?

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was breakfast. :)

I figure I'll drive someplace and get cash and food later.

[foms.livejournal.com]

Something like this has happened to me, twice.

The first time, while I was attending worldcon, in New Orleans, in the early days of ATMs, the machine processed every part of the transaction except putting out the money. Fortunately, the machine had been a pain to get to -- it was in a company cafeteria, closed on weekends and I'd had to get a security guard to get me access. The guard was standing right behind me and saw everything. He signed my transaction record under my notation that no money had come out.

The second time was in Montreal. There was construction going on in the building and the workers cut the electicity off as I was transacting. I, too, got to watch the machine reboot but it did not spit out my card. I, too, had the lovely experience of waiting for a representative of the bank and being hung up on. I had to get a replacement card. What I found weird was that the bank people told me that my old card was physically present at the branch, when I picked up the new card but they were adamant that I would not be allowed to see the card as or after it was destroyed to be sure that there was no hanky panky.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

That is suckful.

And I promise you time for dinner once this *)%$(&$&#* report is done!

[dpolicar]

OS/2 Warp. Who knew?
Perversely, I did.
Sorry about cash/lunch.

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

That is annoying.

Banks are very careful about counting the money in the ATMs, so they should be able to verify that there's extra money in the ATM. But until you complain, they won't know who it belongs to.

and the system starts rebooting. OS/2 Warp

I'm not that surprised, if you want a stable OS, OS/2 wasn't bad. It just never got the support it needed from IBM when MS withdrew from the project.

[foms.livejournal.com]

I'm not terribly surprised about the OS but I wouldn't have been surprised had it been QNX.

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

If I were in that situation, I would have taken out the smallest amount possible form the atm to see if the previously count out cash was still in the works or not.

[forgotten-aria.livejournal.com]

Oh and you have my sympathies. :(

[jered]

Almost all ATMs were OS/2-based until a few years ago, when Diebold (oh pinnacle of security) started deploying Windows-based ones.

[galadhelsul.livejournal.com]

There is a little security camera that records everything that happens at an ATM. Try to contact whoever is in charge of the ATM and find out how long the recordings are held for. Hopefully your bank will deal with things without you needing to access the recordings, but it will at least be useful to know how long you have to request them.

I believe that in the US, the bank has to prove the ATM worked if there is a dispute. I think I read that in some 6.033 paper. In which case, evidence that the ATM rebooted that close to the time of your transaction should be sufficient to make it very hard for them to claim you got the money.