I recently went to the bank and while I was at the teller one of the other bank employees answered the phone. Apparently a customer that had been in there “5 minutes earlier” wanted to know if they could undo the the check deposit they had just made. The person that answered the phone asked one of the other tellers and without hesitation she said “sure” and was about to explain what needed to be done when the bank manager overheard and interrupted the tellers’ answer. I was done with my transaction at this point and didn’t have a reason to stick around to hear what he had to say. This situation left me with a few question:
- Are banks able/willing to undo a check deposit?
- Under what circumstances might someone want to un-deposit a check other than wanting to deposit it into a different bank or account? It just seems weird.
- Has anyone heard of a scam that could be in play here?
I was surprised when the teller was quick to say they could reverse the transaction and was somewhat relieved when the manager interrupted her. But I’m not sure why that was my reaction, it just seemed scam-like to me.
Sure, if that day’s work hasn’t been processed. If the customer had come in the next day, the bank would have already sent the item to the FED for clearing at the bank on which it’s drawn, and at that point, the only way for it to be reversed is for the person who wrote the check to dispute it with their bank (or unless the check wasn’t made payable to the depositor, or the check gets returned by the issuing bank for NSF, etc).
I’m not sure how reversing a deposit could be scam, but then again, some scams are pretty creative.
I can imagine this scenario:
Payer writes a check to payee.
Payee runs to the bank to deposit it.
Payer calls payee and says, “Look, I’m really sorry but I just found out I’m overdrawn and the check I just wrote you is going to bounce.”
Payee calls bank. “Can you reverse that deposit? Because it’s going to bounce and I don’t want to get charged the fee.”
What’s the scam scenario?
If you write me a check & I deposit it & then the bank reverses it because it comes back that you didn’t have enough $ to cover it the fee my bank is charging me is for reversing the credit to my account even though it wasn’t my fault. It’s the same work for them to back out a deposit whether the bank wants to (notified of NSF) or if I want to; actually, it’s probably more work if I request it because that’s probably a manual process.
Also, depending upon the bank/branch, they may not even have the physical paper anymore. It may have already been couriered to a home office or it may have been imaged & shredded at that location already. If either of these scenarios if they reverse it, you can’t get the physical paper check back in your hands again.
Also, if they’ve stamped/scanned the back of the check that it was deposited, no other bank, including them will touch that check again. The physical paper they’re returning to you is not as valuable as what you originally gave to them.
Just wait until you get hit with the $20/$25/$x NSF fee & then tell the person to write a new check for the original amount + the cost of your fee.
bank of America can and will stop/reverse a deposit/withdrawal anytime for 15-35 dollars ……I found this out when I was paying a credit card and not paying close attention clicked pay off the over 2 k balance instead of the 45 I usually paid
We could reverse a transaction and return a check deposit if the same day for free. The banking day ended at 4pm and the bank closed at 6pm. So if you visited at 3:58 and then called 5 minutes later, we wouldn’t be able to do anything. I think you might’ve been able to call the processing division at that point but I don’t know about that.
My bank had a very short window in which to reverse a transaction. I believe it was five minutes, possibly less. I had customers with long complicated transactions wanting to change something done at the start, who had lost their window, and we had to get creative to help them.