Sometimes when I stop at a bank to pick up some coins, I will also ask the teller if they have any small head bills, silver certificates, red seals, etc. 99.9 percent of the time the teller tells me they rarely see them, but customers bring them in from time to time and I am welcome to stop in at any time to see if they have any. Today I stopped at bank and picked up a couple rolls of coins. I then asked the teller if they had any small head bills. She then says to me, that is considered insider trading and is illegal. She tells me I can buy bills and see if there are any in what I buy, but that I can't ask directly about them. She says tellers can't buy them either because that is also considered insider trading. Then she says I need to be careful in the future how it ask for things from a bank. The teller next to her was nodding in agreement the entire time. She was not mean, and I think she was genuinely trying to help, but I had never heard of this before. Does anyone know if there is any truth to this?
Well, that's wacky. "Insider trading" is certainly illegal, but it has nothing to do with cherry-picking paper money! I understand that some banks don't allow tellers to buy coins out of their own till, but I've never heard of what you describe, and I've certainly never encountered it in any of the many banks I've searched.
Its just a person trying to use a fancy word but showing her ignorance by its laughable misuse. It reminds me of the internet, lots of facts and very little knowledge on how to interpret and use those facts. Its a fact there is a term called insider trading. Its a fact it kinda sorta sounds like her job. Its KNOWLEDGE that lets people know it has nothing to do with what she is describing. She is right in that most banks do not want tellers buying coins and currency from their trays. This is because the bank does not want tellers "coin collecting" on the clock. However, this has nothing to do with insider trading. The only "insider trading" I could think of would be if someone worked at the mint or BEP and were buying all of the errors they find, but even that is a huge stretch for the definition. So, bottom line, maybe this branch was instructed by a stupid manager, which is why the tellers were saying that. But its simply not true there is any danger of what you ask tellers for. Ask to talk to the branch manager about it. If you bank there, tell him you are uncomfortable with dealing with such a branch who spew out such lies to their customers.
It is probably likely that the bank has a policy that prohibits tellers from buying from the till and that is what they call it in their internal training because it sounds sexy. Or these tellers already do it surreptitiously and do not want the other tellers to start doing it so they can get all the good stuff.
The teller is a moron. [And I AM being kind!] He/She heard a word or term and is using it. Tell them to buy a dictionary. Then go to a bank that doesn't employ idiots. Or has an IQ test before hiring.
Thanks for the replies everyone. It was definitely the strangest response I've ever received from a teller.
I live in a small town with only three banks. I went to all three asking about silver. Someone inside each of the banks already was scooping that up. I then asked about paper money and was told that no one collects it so none of them pulled anything out. The next time I asked about paper money someone in each bank was pulling it.
Wait until you see in my post later this evening what I found at the bank, sure is good to be friends with the vault teller.
