Well, here is my bank horror story which happened to me a couple of months back. I had gone to Wally World to buy some supplies. I stopped at the ATM there and tried to withdraw $300 bucks to cover my shopping bill and also to buy two money orders to pay my electric and phone bill.
The ATM got all rude to me and burped out a slip that said "Transaction not allowed." I thought maybe I had put my pin number in wrong and tried again with the same result.
I KNEW there was money in my account. Uncle Sam had just sent me my usual few crumbs for my SSDI, and I hadn't been to the bubble gum machine and spent it all yet. So, I went straight to my bank, the State Bank of Foul Play, and withdrew the needed $300, no problem.
Then the next day around 4:45pm, Foul Play Bank called to inform me that I had withdrawn $900 from my accout, leaving me $170.00 in the red. What! No way! Foul Play insisted, however, and informed me that THEIR records showed that I had extracted $600 from the ATM before I came over and whamboozled THEM out of ANOTHER $300!
Nice trick, I guess, if I'd actually ended up with $900 which I didn't.
I had to wait until the next day to go down to the First National Bank of Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves which owns the ATM in question and demanded to know why they were siphoning money off my meager account.
Lucky for me, I had actually KEPT and FOUND the two ATM receipts which showed that the machine had dispersed to me $0 not once but TWICE!
The Tramps and Thieves considered this and then called in an upper level Gypsy. She went to work with her crystal ball and claimed that their count had balanced on the night in question.
Well, duh! Of course it did! Someone lower down on the thief scale had probably miscounted the day's ill gotten gain, came up short, and hit a button somewhere to make things look O.K. Unfortunately, things did not look OK, nor were they, with MY account.
I went back to the Bank of Foul Play which still had all my money in their tight little claws, plus their plans to take even more to make up for the overdraft I had supposedly caused. I proceeded to start crying in the bank lobby. This was too much! My electricity was going to get shut off, and I couldn't buy any food.
Plus, I somehow had to convince both banks that it was THEIR fault, not mine. I was told that the Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves have 10 days to work out things with Foul Play to reach a connivance acceptable to them both.
Lucky for me, Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves finally admitted their error just before I went into total economic melt down.
So, if you ask me, counting up change is the least of the banking industry's problems.
