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Peninsula Daily News Port Angeles, Washington Copyright 2000 Eric Rush www.ericrush.com |
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Oops. Forgot about that ATM withdrawal. Oops. Added that deposit in twice. A few bucks here, a few bucks there—it’s easier for us to make that kind of mistake than for the bank to. But $9,000? The first clue something was wrong was when the ATM refused to cough up $50 from an account that is seldom used and has a normal balance of around $2,000 to keep it earning interest instead of being tapped for service charges. A teller said the ATM wouldn’t give the $50 because the account was $7,000 overdrawn. What? All the teller could learn from her computer terminal was that a $9,000 withdrawal had been made from a bank branch. So how can someone withdraw $9,000 from an account that has only $2,000 in it? The teller didn't know. A phone call to the main branch got things rolling. Someone would check into it and call back. Someone didn't. The monthly statement arrived the next day, a Saturday. Included with the three or four canceled checks for the month was the original of a withdrawal slip for $9,000. A bounced-check notice was in that day’s mail, too. The withdrawal slip had a name, a signature, and a driver’s license number, all unfamiliar to the account holder. The slip also had an account number, but the last three digits were 969. The account the money had been withdrawn from ends in 696. It’s an understandable error. A little numerical dyslexia, maybe. No one caught it. The customer had his $9,000, so he was happy. The teller had completed another transaction, so she was happy. The bank’s computer apparently didn’t see anything wrong with taking $9,000 out of an account that had only $2,000 in it, so it was happy, too. The only one who was less than happy was the bank customer, and perhaps the business that got the $8 check back. The good news is, the bank has a 24-hour toll-free number. The bad news is, there’s a complex voice-mail maze at the end of it. More good news is that the “Your call is important to us” music is pretty good. A human being finally intervened and listened carefully to the chronology, complete with multi-digit numbers. Her computer was right on top of things, and so was she. Unprompted and unasked, she said they’d remove the bounce fee. How can the bank hand $7,000 that’s not in the account over the counter and then bounce a small-change check? The human being didn’t know. She also said they’d remove the low-balance service charge. And pay interest, as if the withdrawal had never been made? After all, the bank had embezzled money from the account. Of course, she said. She even volunteered to write a letter to the business that had the check returned and explain that the error was the bank’s, not the customer’s. Would the account holder prefer the letter be sent directly to the business? Wow! What a painless operation. So how long until everything would be back to normal, right then or on Monday? Five business days. Five days? It took only a couple of seconds to screw it up, so why five days to fix it? It turns out it’s not so simple as clicking a few computer keys and transferring $9,000 out of the other guy’s account into the one it shouldn’t have been taken out of. Some high-salaried bank types had to review the situation and approve it. I guess they have to make things complicated, or they’d be out of work. I wish I’d not heard about this. I won’t be able to assume bank statement discrepancies are my mistakes ever again.
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