Bank of America Improves ATM Deposits

Sadly, these devices don’t work reliably — which means, in effect, they don’t work. I’ve just closed my Bank of America accounts because I didn’t feel like going back to standing on line inside the bank, due to the machine being unable to read my checks.

I got a certain amount of “Are you sure you did it right?” stuff from the staff at the bank. Yes, I am sure, and I tried it many times. I have one monthly check in particular — a normal, printed corporate check — that it never read.

This is technology-driven decision-making at its worst: ignore the customers’ needs and just do whatever looks cool and spiffy. Have fun with your new toys, BoA, and good-bye.

Bank of America’s new deposit idea with their ATM’s is a disaster! This evening, I had to make a deposit of 350.00 in ca$h. I went to my branch which has 3 outdoor machines. 2 Drive ins and one walk-up. I inserted my card and punched in my PIN. I pushed the “deposit” button, and it asked CASH or Check. I punched CASH.I inserted the cash (3 – $100 bills and one 50.00 bill) in the proper direction and the door closed. It accepted only ONE of the 100.00 bills and flipped the other bills upside down unaccepted. I re-inserted them several times to no avail. I went to the other drive up machine, and after several tries, got it to accept the 50.00 bill. Then, I went to the walk-up machine, (Which I don’t like to do for fear of being robbed) and tried to get it to accept the 2 100.00 bills. After several unsuccessful tries I gave up.
I went to a lounge in the neighborhood and had a couple drinks, changed the 2 hundreds for new ones and went back to my bank at Flamingo and Sandhill.
Neither drive up ATM was accepting cash…..Only checks. I went to the ATM on the side of the building..It was accepting cash but not checks. It would NOT accept my ‘new’ bills either.
I drove to the only other ATM’s in the neighborhood at Harmon and Boulder Highway and tried both machines there. Neither would take my money. I wasted over an hour of my time and a couple gallons of gas trying to perform a 45 second task. there is NO OPTION to do it the “Old” way using an envelope and a deposit slip.
This system SUCKS Big Time. Diebold equipment sucks! This system was NOT properly tested, and, a lot of people will be very upset with the wasted time and total inconvenience of this new system.
I will be willing to bet that BofA will be soon charging customers to use tellers in the very near future. I also see the day when there will be no tellers. So much for stimulus funds putting people to work and preserving the economy and the people of this country.

Chase switched to the same Diebold “no-envelope” ATM’s that BoA switched to. In the past month the same ATM I frequent jammed once because of a single personal check, and today because I put in a $20 bill, $10 bill, two $5 dollar bills, and eight singles. A total of 12 cash items jammed the ATM. My sorrows go out to someone who tries to deposit the advertised 100 cash items at once. I guarantee they’ll be on the phone with chase customer service filling a claim like I’ll to do AGAIN to get my money deposited.

Not only do they jam easily, I spend a lot more time at the ATM trying to get it to accept everything

I like the idea of the new ATM’s, but the execution is very, very bad. Luckily I have a bank account at the National City across the street that still uses the envelope deposit system that I have NEVER HAD ANY PROBLEMS WITH.

Bank of America ATM screen at my neighborhood food store changed to show the ATM was not working in the middle of my deposit of multiple checks. No return of my plastic banking card or of the checks the ATM had taken from me.

I sent a text description of this performance to BofA by secure message in online banking 2 days later. BofA replied that BofA had no record of my transaction. An irresponsible outrage! What if I had deposited currency or requested a currency withdrawal when the ATM crashed? I do not now know if I can get the makers of those checks to give me duplicates. One should never trust a Bank of America to protect one’s interests in the simplest transaction. I recall
reading multiple news stories about customers receiving credit for less cash than the amount they had deposited into a Bank of America ATM.

I HATE the new ATM deposit system. I used to be able to put my checks one envelope and make the deposit. Now I have to stand at the ATM, doing one at a time. I usually only get to put one or two in before someone else comes up and want to use the machine. BOA says it’s easier. Maybe for them, it’s easier. It’s certainly not easier for me.

I love these machines in Arkansas. I have not had a problem yet and it is much faster not having to wait in lines inside or slow tellers in the drive-thru plus the deposit is posted sooner than the old way.

I am all for the new technology, but the new atms are worthless because the softly is poorly designed. My perspective as a firmware engineer:

The key problem is no graceful fatal failure modes. If the ATM cannot read the check, it prints out a generic error message claiming your check is not valid. No mention of magnetic inks, etc. No number to call, not even a suggestion to go deposit it inside the bank.

On the other hand, it will show you the check and ask you what the amount is, if it is handwritten. I consider this a good feature, despite privacy concerns.

But, why do I need an error message at all? Why can’t the ATM fall back to legacy processing mode like it was a deposit-slip-less envelop ATM? Just print the account number on the check and throw it in a bin for manual processing. This would prevent the user from going inside the bank, reducing labor costs.

I called Bank of America and the customer service rep said she had heard no complaints personally about the new ATMs not accepting some checks. One online reference I found quoted BoA claiming 99.95% acceptance rate. With millions of checks every day, that’s a LOT of failures.

So what’s the bottom-line? For Bank of America, increased accuracy and reduced costs. Most failure cases are pushed over to the customer instead of the bank. For the typical customer, he will see increased accuracy and improved service. The problem is the atypical customer. The customer likely has no control over how checks he received are printed, so if it isn’t accepted, customer service quality plummets.

I think the argument that the ATM ‘usually’ accepts checks perfectly is flawed. From a customer service quality perspective, this is a bad argument. The only thing that matters is overal quality. If it fails 0.05% of the time, you decrease your quality by that much. And the customer is stuck trying to fix the bank’s problem. Previously, errors were either the user’s data entry, or the bank’s data entry.

I will leave BoA if the software isn’t improved because the abundance is ATMs was the only reason I use them to begin with. If I can’t reliably deposit the one or two checks I receive every 6 months, I might as well use a high-interest checking account where I have to mail my deposits, and get ATM fee reimbursement.

BoA ‘improved’ deposits are a disaster for the consumer. Frequently fails to read checks, takes too long to process transactions, and is a poor attempt to drive down high-cost activities. Most people who deposit checks normally do a lot of other transactions at the bank and would eventually get fed up and leave. BoA, fire your MBAs before they re-engineer you to bankruptcy.

I love it. Has never failed for me.

I had 45 checks to deposit. It took an hour. Long line formed behind me. Sorry, not my fault BOA switched to this confounded new system. A couple of envelopes, used to take 2 minutes. Now typically 45 seconds to 1 minute per check if it reads it OK.

Deposit automation, as it is called, is a highly reliable service for depositing cash and checks at BofA, as well as at most other large banks. The typical ATM machine with deposit automation costs near 40K per machine. The bank would not spend this money if the machine did not work. I personally use ATM machines with this service every week, and it has never failed to read my check. And if it does, the machine gives you the option to manually input the amount. All you have to do is read the directions on the screen. It, also, saves time. as well as the cost of paper envelopes which are used for one day and thrown out directly after your check/money is taken out. Try to comprehend the amount of envelopes saved in one day at every BofA branch across the country. Now add TD Bank and HSBC (two other banks leading the way with deposit automation deployment). I also would not consider a 99.95% acceptance rate “a lot of failures” for any process. That is one out of every 20,000 consumers. Of the roughly 14 million ATM transactions processed in 2008, this would mean that 700 people would have received error messages. 700 out of 14 million? I would take that if I was the decision maker BofA, or any other business. Not to mention banks actualy lose $250 per day on ATM machines given up front cost. ATM machines are there simply for customer retention. The more ATM locations in a given city, the higher probability the consumer will bank there (for fee-less ATM service). Which circles back to my main point. Banks would not deploy deposit automation if: 1) it was not economical and/or 2)it was agitating consumers. I realize everyone has bad experiences, but many had bad experiences with the old ATM machines, and there was a higher probability in 2008 that you had your identity stolen then had your check misread in an ATM.

I don’t know how I follow that up…

The ATMs are great. The pressure from BoA employees to use these great ATMs (even when there is no one waiting in the teller line but 3 people in the only deposit ATM line) is ridiculous.

Listen, I know the deposit ATMs are awesome and they can do anything…I’m sure they could probably watch my niece and nephew for me if I had to step out for a minute. The technology is amazing. But I want to get in and out of the bank as quickly as possible – even if that means going to a teller.

BoA doesn’t need a person working there just to try and convince me to use the deposit ATM as soon as I walk near the teller line.

I get it. It’s bright red for christ’s sake and it’s the fisrt thing I see when I walk in.

I refuse to use the ATMs for deposits, and I’m getting tired of having BoA try to force me to use them. Today the teller was disgruntled that I told her “I don’t like how the machines beep constantly,” and would rather wait in line than use them.

I walked into bank of America the other day and felt almost an intrusion of my privacy when the nosy bank lady came right over and said “what brings you into the bank today?!” in her most corny customer service sounding voice. I told her I am making a deposit. She must have been able to tell my irritation with her question because she then said, “I only ask because we are showing people our new ATM’S”. I was a little less irritated once I knew she had a purpose and they had something new. I’m like a kid that way. So I went out there and she showed me the new ATM and the way it scans the check, no need for an envelope, and it even prints out a copy of the check on the receipt. Pretty neat. The next week I was dropping by before work to make a cash deposit, and the experience wasn’t quite as convenient. It took me 35 minutes to deposit 140.00. It spit my bills out at least 5 times, saying it could not accept them. Something like a vending machine. I wrestled with it to then get my bills back out as the trap door kept shutting. At the same time, it’s asking do you need more time for this transaction? Obviously I need more time, as you’re not working! So finally it accepts my bills and the options are “add cash”, which I’m thinking means “add this cash to acct”… so of course I say yes, it opens and expects more cash, in which I hit cancel, so once again- it spits the original bills back out. And I’m back at square one with trying to get it to accept the original bills! It was a total disaster. The moral of the story is big deal that we can do it without an envelope, at least back then it took one quick transaction and there were no problems with the bills. I’m highly irritated they probably spent millions of dollars on something that worked completely fine already. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And if they are so high-tech, maybe they should start having the ability to write tardy notes for your boss when you’re late because it took an hour to make a deposit!
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!