I’m the boss at a place that deals with cash a fair bit, and we don’t track it as well as we should for a variety of reasons.
I found $120 on the floor. The people who get paid in cash (ligitimately!) for the work they do NEVER get a $120 payment. The cash was folded quite neatly, and on the floor in a place where few people who get paid in cash actually go.
No one has asked around for the money.
Which makes me think that it was a staff member ripping me off.
No, you just picked up what someone threw away. You are in the clear.
I withdrew $300 once right after my Dad died- and i didn’t take it. The next guy very nicely returned it to the bank, which after a small delay gave it back to me. It wasn’t the money- it was the timing. So, yes, the bank will send the cash back. I had them send him a $50 Savings bond- I paid for it, but they forwarded it.
Twice now I have been able to “pay it back” by bringing in ATM cards that the prior user forgot.
Loose cash- in not too large amounts- found without any ID or sight of who dropped it- is indeed “free money”. Keep it- or donate it. You’re right- don’t “give it to the Manager”. Whiterabbit- you coudl have kept that cash without a problem- by giving to 'the manager"- you did exactly that- you “gave it to the manager” - it has about 0 chance of being “returned”. You needed it more than the Manager of a fast-food place does. :dubious:
If any of you feel guilty about such windfalls- then donate it- or give it to the next homeless person or something.
Just so I know we’re talking about the same thing; at the end of the transaction, after you’ve received your money and receipt, it asks you if you want another transaction.
In my experience, if you press “Yes”, it will ask for your pin again. Now granted, it’s not all that frequent that I press Yes, but every time I have, regardless of the bank, I’ve had to re-enter the PIN. It stands out because every time I think to myself “I’m so glad someone thought this far ahead”
I know the ATMs of the bank for which I work do this, and I witnessed first hand yesterday that another national line of banks’ atms do the same. I certainly expect that there are exceptions to this rule, but because both banks I just mentioned are nationwide, I can’t imagine it’s a local thing.
Nope, I’m with commasense here. Never had that happen, TellMeI’mNotCrazy. Any ATM I’ve used has just allowed me to go on with the transaction, given that the card has remained in the machine the entire time.
TellMeI’mNotCrazy, I’m here to tell you you’re not crazy. All the ATMs around here ask for your PIN to continue with a second transaction. Regional difference, perhaps? I’m in Chicago(ish).
At the ATMs I use (TD Canada Trust), if you make a withdrawal it spits out your ATM card first and then after you take the card it spits out your money. If you want to do anything else after that you have to put the card back in and start over. However, after any other kind of transaction (deposit, passbook update, etc.) it does ask you if you want to perform another transaction.
That really puzzles me in terms of fraud prevention. If you make a significant withdrawal (e.g. $200, which usually for me gets spit out in 10 20’s), couldn’t you carefully wiggle the middle part of the stack out and then leave a few bills left to get sucked back into the machine? How would the machine know that you had ripped it off? I’m not suggesting anyone do it, I’m just assuming that any bank with an ATM that did that must have thought of that ripoff - how do they stop it?
The time I left money in the machine, (Fleet Bank) I called them right after I realized it had happened. They said that while they could see that the money had been reversed back into the machine, they had to wait until the next pickup was completed in order to verify that the machine was that amount over. It was a couple of days before the money actually credited to my account (but then, it happened on a weekend.)
It might be a bank difference more than a regional difference. Maybe a little extra layer of protection in the larger banks.
Honestly, though, I am floored that any bank would not do this - I can’t even count the number of times I’ve walked up to an ATM behind someone and they’ve forgotten to hit “no” to the next transaction.
I have never been asked for my PIN a second time. Then again, if I am making a deposit I always do that first and then ask for money. If I am only withdrawing cash, I never ask for a second operation unless it would be to check my balance. Maybe the sequence of events triggers a response, or a certain time lag; I don’t know. I do know that in the case I reported, the bank manager gave the impression that I could have ripped off the card owner if I had been so inclined. This happened in Homestead, Florida by the way, and Homestead is not exactly a crime free place.
I’m a bank manager in the Milwaukee area and I work on a variety of ATM’s daily.
First off in this area in every ATM I’ve used or serviced when it asks you if you want to do another transaction I’ve never been asked to reenter a pin number. However if you leave it at the “Do you want to preform another transaction” screen for longer than 5 seconds it loudly and annoyingly beeps for the next five seconds. In the machines where the money stays on the rollers if you don’t pull the cash out it does the same thing.
The only other protection that the ATM’s around here have is that if you try to do something that can’t be done (ie ask for $100 when your balance is $80), it kicks you out and you have to start the entire process over again.
As far as leaving two of the bills in there, taking the rest and reporting that it was sucked back inside, it wouldn’t work. Because the machine doesn’t care whether or not you took any of the bills. In the morning when I go out and balance the time machine, if the time machine has more money in it than its supposed to all I do is report the varience to the TYME department.
If its your money and you don’t bank with us, then you report the loss to YOUR bank who then contacts our bank and exchanges the money on that level.
As far as finding money in the tray and presenting it to the bank I would reccomend against this. While technically it is possible to go into the machine, figure out which transaction came before yours and track them down, it is a major pain. The logs that you have to go through are not as organized as they should be and it would take a great deal of time. Even if you did find out exactly who’s money it is, if they don’t bank with us, working through thier bank to credit the account would be a nightmare.
the ATMs here work the same way, additionally, it beeps so long as either card or money remains untaken. this probably continues for a while before it is swallowed.
How on earth would anyone be able to prove it’s their money? Don’t all $20 bills look the same? Maybe I can see this working in some really small town where everybody knows each other, but not in a city where (A) probably more than one person has lost 20 bucks, and (B) there’s probably more than a few people who’d lie to get the money. The reason for pocketing the money isn’t some sort of childish “finders keepers” argument, it’s that it just isn’t feasible to return it to the owner. I think if I brought a $20 bill to the police in my city, they’d tell me there’s no way to return it to the owner, and that I should keep it. (But I’m not about to try it with my own $20, just in case I’m wrong.) I also think most people in my city would never even think about asking the police if anyone found the money, because (1) they’d figure the odds of anyone turning the money in to the police are incredibly low, and (2) they’d figure – as I do – that the police wouldn’t accept it. So even if the police did accept it, it would just sit there forever (and eventually would probably become a donation to the police department.)
When I was in college I went to Cancun on Spring BReak and it was a terrible experince in a few ways. First the company I arranged the trip with changed my flight date, which actually meant my friend couldn’t go. Then when I get to Mexico, there is no hotel room for me (and others). I end up spending the night in the lobby and someone steals my jacket when I doze off. It had my plane ticket in it and, stupidly, a checkbook (I had forgotten it was in the jacket when I left for the trip). Finally I get a room, go to the consulate to get my flight and other information situated and decide to meet friends at the beach and get a cab. I forget my wallett in the cab…my friggin’ wallet! Holy cow this was becoming the trip from hell, nbever saw that wallet again. Luckily all that i had in there of importance was some money. Needless to say I had rationalized all of this at the time as the travel companies fault for making me sleep in the lobby and generally putting me all in a kerfuffle over the few days. Well, anyway we are leaving for the airport and the travel organizaer is there getting everyone signed in. He leaves and there is ahundred dollar bill under the chair he was just sitting in. It was undoubtedly his, but I took it and didn’t think twice about it, nothing else had gone my way. I don’t think it justifies it, but I haven’t lost much sleep over it.
Similar to what happened with jjimm - when I moved in to my first student flat on my own, I found an envelope marked ‘savings’ under a cabinet. It was full of banknotes. I wasn’t going to give it to the rent man, as he was creepy - every time he came round I had to have a friend with me, as he’d tried to touch me before when I saw him alone [irrelevant, I know]. Anyway I handed the envelope over to the police, and 6 months later I got the money back - minus the cost of an ad. they’d put in the paper to find the owner
I find this a little odd. Why should you pay for the cost of the ad? Since it’s the job of the police to find owners of lost property, shouldn’t the cost of doing so be paid for through taxation?
Suppose the cost of the ad were greater than the amount of money you found. Would you then owe the police the balance?
Suppose you found something other than money and turned that in to the police, and they ran an ad to find the owner. If no one came forward to claim the property, would the police then bill you for the ad? Would they auction off the property and send you the balance?
It seemed reasonable enough to me at the time. At that point it wasn’t ‘my’ money, it belonged to whatever previous tenant who’d hidden it there - and if they were stupid enough to hide money under the furniture and then leave it there, why should the taxpayers pay for them to get it back?
I doubt if they’d have bothered to advertise if there wasn’t enough money - they’d have just kept it for the six months and given it to me if it wasn’t claimed, like jjimm.
Presumably they had a procedure to follow for items other than money. I just don’t know. The only time I found something really valuable was on the London Underground. I got into an empty carriage and there was a huge camera kit stuck under one of the seats - lots of cameras and lenses worth a fortune. I handed it in at Richmond station where I got off - and they didn’t even take my name and address or give me a receipt. I’ve always had my suspicions that someone in that office took that kit home with him.
It’s interesting that despite severalpeople saying they would not trust cops with lost money, we have had several reports of cops doing the right thing.
Hardly conclusive evidence, but it makes me feel better about cops. Until now, I’d never hand lost money found in a public space to the police…
