> There are an estimated 25 million safe deposit boxes in America, and they operate in a legal gray zone within the highly regulated banking industry. There are no federal laws governing the boxes; no rules require banks to compensate customers if their property is stolen or destroyed.
> Every year, a few hundred customers report to the authorities that valuable items — art, memorabilia, diamonds, jewelry, rare coins, stacks of cash — have disappeared from their safe deposit boxes. Sometimes the fault lies with the customer. People remove items and then forget having done so. Others allow children or spouses access to their boxes, and don’t realize that they have been removing things. But even when a bank is clearly at fault, customers rarely recover more than a small fraction of what they’ve lost — if they recover anything at all. The combination of lax regulations and customers not paying attention to the fine print of their box-leasing agreements allows many banks to deflect responsibility when valuables are damaged or go missing...
> Wells Fargo’s safe-deposit-box contract caps the bank’s liability at $500. Citigroup limits it to 500 times the box’s annual rent, while JPMorgan Chase has a $25,000 ceiling on its liability. Banks typically argue — and courts have in many cases agreed — that customers are bound by the bank’s most-current terms, even if they leased their box years or even decades earlier.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-deposit-box...
The point of the viewing room is that it starts and ends empty.
This contractor had stored all his equipment and tools in there. Then I had to go and mingle it with my box's contents.
What if he had discovered some drill bits were missing? I could be suspected, because I was alone in private with them, so I could have placed them in my SDB.
I asked the manager what I should do if I find someone else's belongings when I enter the viewing room. They said, that shouldn't happen: I should inform them. Yep.