Banking
Sat May 8, 2010 2:04:21 am

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I try to use the ATM to make deposits whenever possible. It's far more efficient than waiting in line for a human teller, and it helps me to avoid human interaction. My bank "upgraded" all their ATMs last year to allow for deposits without a deposit slip. The new system scans the checks as they are inserted into the ATM. The system seems to work fairly well except for the handling of extra wide checks. It consistently fails to read the account number on these checks regardless of how clear the text appears to be. This forces me to wait online for a human teller, which I had not needed to do for over a decade.

While waiting online today, I was approached by a banker who asked if I was making a deposit in my own name. I should have been suspicious, but I went with her to her cubicle, because I didn't want to wait on the long line. She asked me to sit down and she walked away with my deposit slip and checks. I watched her carefully. She never actually looked at what I handed to her. She just handed it over to a teller and came back to her cubicle.

Upon her return, she informed me that my account had minimum balance requirements and that she could see that I had incurred some charges in the past. She never looked at my account number and had not typed anything into her computer. This was highly suspicious. How did she know what type of account I had? That's when the sales pitch began. She started explaining how some new type of account was so much better than what I had. I had to sit through this while waiting, because my deposit still had not been finished being processed. When someone walked over with my deposit receipt, I got up and told her that I was too busy to discuss account options at the moment. I walked away immediately without listening to her reply.