News

US, UK report 'mis-dispensing' ATMs

July 27, 2012

Cash machines on both sides of the pond have been especially popular lately. Today, news stories from both Ipswich, England, and Ocean City, New Jersey, reported incidents of ATMs doubling the amount of cash dispensed to customers.

The BBC reported that police in Ipswich were summoned at around 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday to a Lloyds TSB branch to control an unruly crowd at an ATM. The machine was "mis-dispensing cash," as a Lloyd's spokesperson put it, and arguments were starting to break out among impatient cardholders waiting in line for their bonanza. The police kept things calm until a Lloyds employee arrived and shut off the machine.

The Thursday evening previous, a Bank of America ATM at an Ocean City Boardwalk tram terminal also "mis-dispensed," according a report by Ocean City Today. One anonymous ATM-user said a friend had sent him a text telling him to come to the machine because it was paying out double. In this case, the crowd, though large, remained orderly through the 45 minutes it took them to empty machine.

The Lloyds spokesman said the bank would not attempt to recover the cash that was incorrectly dispensed. The Ocean City report didn't say whether BofA would make an attempt to recover overpaid funds.

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