Ask HN: How common is it to be ripped off by a Citibank ATM? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How common is it to be ripped off by a Citibank ATM?

7 pointsmasonic6 comments

I had an extremely frustrating and frightening experience at a Citibank branch today when attempting to make a cash payment on a Citi credit card.

Although I've done so on my other two Citi cards many times over the years, this particular branch insisted on two forms of photo-ID to accept a deposit (which I did not have on me). They then directed me to instead pay at their ATM, which had no ID requirement at all. Summary: the ATM aborted in the midst of my transaction, keeping all of the cash, but giving no receipt or acknowledgment. The branch, as yet, still refuses to give me any written acknowledgment of any portion of the payment and refuses me access to the surveillance video or other supporting data.

Have others run into such basic systemic/design failures with Citi ATMs, and if so, were you able to get access to supporting surveillance data?

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While I can't offer any advice re. Citi ATMs, your experience has taught you a very valuable life lesson, albeit the hard way.

This next part is something that should have been blindly obvious to you, and after this will be:

NEVER EVER perform any transaction at ANY automated system using untraceable items where you stand to gain a loss should the untraceable items go missing.

Cash - this is an untraceable item because its use leaves no paper trail anywhere.

ATM - an automated system.

Therefore, NEVER EVER perform any deposits at ANY ATMs where you are depositing cash.

There are too many opportunities for cash to go missing mysteriously at an ATM to trust any ATM with a cash deposit, ever. Always do your cash deposits with a human where you will obtain a receipt immediately of the amount deposited, and can dispute that amount immediately should there be an error on the receipt.

In your case above, when they directed you to the ATM, you should have said: "No thanks." and walked away to return at another time with the two forms of ID they supposedly needed.

I am pretty sure cash that is left inside an atm can be easily traced by bank performing a log of transactions at this particular atm, calculating a balance on paper and present balance in cash, the difference will be the cash amount of the failed transaction.

(1) Things happen with technology, ATMs in particular. And in general (just as with an erroneous charge to your credit card) it might take a few days to straighten out. In this case, it might help to employ Occam's razor, and assume that you didn't stumble onto a criminal gang inside of Citi, out to randomly fleece customers making attempted cash deposits; rather, just another case of technology (inevitably) going wrong, and the people at the branch not being trained in how to respond sensitively to the consequences.

(2) Like the other poster says, it's a good idea to be circumspect (at least) about ATM deposits. If you must make a cash deposit at an ATM in the future, consider filming the whole transaction, taking care to make sure that your ATM card is clearly identifiable, along with the amounts and quantities of the bills (and perhaps a few of their serial numbers). That would give you much more leverage should you find yourself in the position of needing to force one of these banks to investigate the mishap properly.

Go back to the branch where the atm is, talk to a manager.

Explain the situation as a concerned customer. Be polite, appearing worried and scared they won't straighten this out might help too.

They should have record that the ATM was over the amount of the payment you were trying to make and perhaps some other logged data of you inserting your card, initiating a payment, maybe the amount and an error code when things went wrong.

State that you didn't have two forms of id, ask why would I need that to make a payment, and were directed to pay through the ATM.

When using the ATM as directed by their employee it took your cash but you don't see a payment applied. You were following their instructions, key on this while being polite.

Have your statement that shows the amount due and indicate the amount you tried to pay.

Having an atm or receipt of the money being withdrawn for this purpose might help.

You're going to have to go buddy up with a manager.

If that doesn't work try a manager at the next nearest branch.

You'll need to find the right person to straighten it out.

If the payment was small it might not be worth pursuing you can weigh that. Or if you just want to get it straightened out on principle keep going.

Good luck.

Talk to the branch manager. If that fails, threaten to talk to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau[1] (which is a branch of the federal government). That will almost always cause the bank to become much more helpful. If they don't, well, actually talk to the CFPB. They have a fair amount of clout.

Really, though, what bank wouldn't start an investigation about an ATM that ate a deposit? Perhaps consider a new bank once you've resolved this issue.

1. http://www.consumerfinance.gov/

I've done hundreds of transactions at various Citi ATMs over a 10+ year period and never had an issue. So I'd say pretty uncommon.

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