Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Weird ATM occurrence

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I went to the ATM today, as I haven’t been in a while. The branch of my bank I went to had a snazzy new ATM setup, with Hi Tech Graphics and touch screens and everything but a back massage. Neat. I put my card in, I type in my PIN, I go through the rigamarole.

While the ATM counts out the money and prints my receipt and all, I glance at the picture of the ATM card that they put underneath the card slot and I think, “That’s not the card I put in there.”

The cash door pushes money at me and the receipt prints out and then my card comes out. Indeed, I did not put my bank card in there; I put my regular ol’ Visa in there. I have no idea what my Visa’s card PIN is; I have never used it for cash. The receipt in no way mentions that this was a Visa cash advance, although of course it doesn’t have my bank balance on there either.

What happened?

  1. Dude! You got lucky! Free money! Where’s that bank?
  2. In fact, you have beaten the 1-in-10000 odds (probably slightly less than that) and, in fact, your bank card and your Visa card have the exact same PIN.
  3. The bank could frickin’ care less as to whether you have the PIN for a Visa card. Have Visa card, get money. In which case: where’s that bank?

Comments

  1. Weird.

    Also weird is the fact that it spat out the money before returning the card. Over here, at least, ATMs don’t release money until you have removed your card, to stop you walking away with the cash and leaving your card behind.

  2. My money (not literally) is on 2. Mundane a possibility as it is, I think you picked a pin for the Visa that was the same as the other card so it’d be easier to remember, but since you never planned to actually use it, you forgot that you’d ever picked one.

  3. Well, that would be weird, because I didn’t pick a PIN for my Visa card — they sent me an assigned one (that of course I could change) and I’ve never bothered a)learning the one they sent me or b)setting a new one, because I never use the Visa card at ATMs!

  4. You’ll probably see a finance charge starting from the date you “borrowed” the money.

  5. call VISA asap and pay off your “cash advance.” That may be what happened. If so (at least for my card), they’ll start charging interest from that day forward.