A friend was in Colorado last week on her son’s birthday (he was here in WI). She decided she would give him a present by depositing some money in his Chase checking account. She knows his name and his account number, and she went into a Denver Chase branch to make a deposit.
They would not take cash from her and put it into his account. They claimed it was about the legalization of selling pot, and that there are now much stricter rules about tracking cash transactions. She had to go buy a money order, and then they bank was willing to depost it into her son’s account instead of cash.
It sounds to me like a bullshit story to collect a money order fee. Can anyone provide some information to confirm or deny what the bank told her? FYI, she claims to have done this same kind of deposit in a WI bank in the recent past without any issues, so if there are such laws, they are probably CO state laws.
I know of no state law against depositing cash, but it sounds like many banks have implemented much stricter rules because of the federal government’s stance on recreational marijuana.
Colorado does have a credit union specially for marijuana business in the works, so hopefully that will take some of the pressure off the banks.
I think that’s bogus…just Chase being their annoying selves, making inconvenience for customers and blaming it the mj industry.
I have had someone deposit cash in my account while I was out of town several times in the last year with no questions at all. Granted, I don’t bank at Chase, I use a credit union.
It’s a policy that went into effect at Chase Bank nationwide (not just in Colorado) on Feb 1, 2014.
You must show ID to deposit cash and you can deposit cash only into an account you own or on which you are listed as an authorized user.
Chase has never revealed why exactly they adopted this policy other than some hand-waving PR speak. I doubt that bank tellers know why. But like any job, a “folklore” develops when they don’t really know what’s going on. So when the thousandth customer demands to know why they can’t deposit cash, I’m sure Colorado tellers tell them “It’s because of the pot laws.” And I’m sure the teller believes it because Margie, who’s been here for 2 years, told her. And Margie knows because June in Customer Service said she heard it from Beverly in loan processing…
I’m sure if you went to a Chase Bank branch in New York and tried to deposit cash, they would have some theory about how Elliot Spitzer once sued Chase about some cash…
Wait a minute. Does the son live in Wisconsin or Colorado? There is a chance that despite the name a Chase bank in one state is not the same as a Chase bank in another state.
Right. Chase Denver is totally unaffiliated with Chase Manhattan, Chase Des Moines, and Chase Marietta. And then there’s Chase Queens, which is something else entirely.
I’ve actually run into this problem before with Bank of America. It had to do with differing bank regulating authority. In my case it was because the two branches in question were acquired by B of A at different times and were actually two different banks despite the name. And those branches were in the same state. Add in two different states as in the OP’s case and it is possible. A teller may not know enough about a banks charter to provide an explanation.
This reminds me of the time I was in NY and tried to deposit money (in this case a counter check in USD from my bank in Canada, although that was irrelevant) into my Seattle bank. They were both branches of Bank of America. Nonetheless the NY branch did not know how to make a deposit into a branch in Seattle. A phone call resolved the problem. I believe that the problem was too many mergers and too many different systems. My bank was originally a smallish bank called SeaFirst. The deposit slip had you check off the name of the state your account was located in and WA was not one of the choices.