ATM Weirdness…

Posted Wednesday, February 28th 2007

ATM cash machines can be the weirdest ever..

Yesterday, as I was getting off work, I decided to grab some money out of an ATM belonging to the bank where I have an account. I walk up to the ATM, put in my card, enter my pin, and I’m taken to the screen where I select the amount of cash I want. I enter the desired amount, and the ATM tells me that I have insufficient funds in my account.

Fairly confident that I should have at least 5 times of the desired amount in my account, I try again, to the same reusult. Okay, I try half the amount I wanted, and I get the money. A bit confused, I take my money, my card, and the bank slip (which does not give an account balance when you take money out), and make a mental note to call the bank at the morning and ask what’s going on.

I called my bank this morning, and asked for a statement by e-mail (they are still working on their Internet-accessible features - should be done by the end of March I’m informed). A few minutes later, I get a scanned page from a printout by e-mail, informing me that sure enough, I have money on my account.

After a call to the bank again, I was informed that the ATM was out of money, and that it most likely uses the same error message to inform users that it’s empty, that it uses to inform users that they’re out of money.

Fucking amazing.

Oh, and don’t get me started on the time when I was in Athens, trying to take the last 100 euros out of my bank account, and the ATM decided to take the money out of my account, but not give the cash to me. So there I was, in Athens, about to board a train, broke. Fun times..