Honest the ATM ate my bankcard!

  10/15/07

The cameras they have should document this.

Monday, October 15, 2007 slightly before 7:30 a.m. I went to the ATM on Roosevelt and Broadway to get some money.

The card slide in differently, I think faster then usual. The ATM didn't ask me for a pin but just sat there doing nothing. I knew I was screwed. I waited a while.

When nothing happened I tried punching keys, still nothing happened. But after a while the screen said the ATM was out of service or someother message. and said call

(800)To-Wells
I continue to press buttons and panic. Oddly the normal fancy screen went away and a screen that appeared to be a DOS screen booting came up. It went thru the memory address checking and such.

Then a screen came up that said the marchine was out of service.

At about 7:30 a.m. I called the 800 number and talked to a guy named Eric in the call center in Westlake, Texas.

Eric wasnt very helpful at all all he did was said he would send somebody to look at the machine. I gave him my name but he said he wouldnt do anything cuz i couldnt prove it was me.

I told Eric I was worried that the machine would spit my card out and give it to someone else. And as a computer geek I knew that my pin is encoded in the mag strip on the card and that any other computer geek who had a mag card reader and knew what they were doing could get my pin off of the card and use it.

Eric also said that they would not give me my card back but they would issue me another one.

After the phone call I went back to the ATM to see if it had spit out my bankcard. I could not see the bank card.

I called back at 8:39 a.m. and talked to some other guy who also was in Westlake, Texas. He said he would cancel my card and mail me a new one.

He got the correct address of the ATM and said it was at 711 W Broadway.

This guy said that the ATM shreds cards they keep. So there was not going to be a card to give back.

After talking to this guy I also went back to the ATM to see if it had spit my bank card out. It had not. Or if it did somebody else grabbed it.