My bank recently removed its automated coin counter. They graciously gave a few months notice so people could come in and dump their change for cash one last time. I used to drag my spare pocket change down to that big noisy centrifuge and make an extra $70 - $80 once or twice a year. I've also heard of other banks getting out of the change counting business. Does anyone know why? No one at my bank seemed to know why this service disappeared. Plus, what effect will this have on roll searchers and scourers for older coins? Will it limit the population? Or have little to no effect?
It still costs the bank service fees to have the change picked up by an armored service. When are people going to realize that conveniences like this are not free. Chris
And to purchase the rolls of paper, and they have to pay people to roll the coins. It is sad that so many banks are getting rid of these services, you would think they would set a limit before they went this far.
I wonder how much of this is actually driven by large-scale coin-roll hunting (or, as some banks apparently call it, "mining"). If a bank has enough people ordering box after box of halves, then running them through the machine to be shipped back to a supplier, sooner or later they're going to get tired of footing the bill for all the shipments and machine maintenance.
Limits? What good would limits do? The banks still have to pay the fees. And, if some of the members here who CRH are any indication, they would just as soon go to another bank and bleed them dry. They don't give a darn! Chris
I also has to do with the fact that a bank back East, TD I think, got caught shorting people on the counts. It was on the news a while back. Doesn't matter much where I live because very few banks have machines. Roll it up, get a bag, or use a coinstar.
CapitalOne is my bank. They took the machines out last year in NYC. They told me they were not making any profit from it. It was free for customers such as me and not enough non customers were using them.
Of all the local branches of my bank that I've ever visited and looked for a coin machine (which is 8), only one has a coin machine. I've used it only once, and plan on using it again in the near future. It's free for customers. not sure if they charge for non-customers. One local branch is under construction for renovations and I've been told that they will be getting a coin machine, too. They also told me which other branches have the machines. It's only 3 other ones (which I never go to).
Interest rates are going up. Banks are going to get squeezed. It's just a matter of time before only business accounts can buy coins for free and return coins for free. I like this analogy - banks are like cops, the cops know where the underage people go to have group parties with beer and the banks know who is buying and return coin for Coin Hunting... but each new class of kids can't figure how the cops know where to look and each new group of Coin Hunters can't figure out how banks know that they are collectors and not businesses... but, you see... the party spots in a community are pretty static, it turns out your parents partied there and your grandparents partied there, it ain't no big secret, and the Coin Hunters have been active since there were public banks with coin available for purchase. Back in the early 1980s banks charged for coin rolls and put limits on how much coin a customer could buy. The same situation is taking place in the 2010s. The coin machines were an attempt to get new customers. Now... those coin machines are being monopolized by Coin Hunters who are dumping their unwanted coins. It should be obvious that banks will see this and get rid of the coin machines.
I agree, although a loose limit that I was thinking of (maybe a hypothetical $50 per transaction for example) would not do much, it would be a better step to take instead of getting rid of the machines as a whole, where maybe they would have the machines for a little bit longer. Maybe too, it would reduce the fees that the banks would have to pay as a whole in the long run. I do not coin roll too much, where I typically hunt maybe $5 in pennies every couple months with a roll or two of dimes here and there, so I do not know exactly what the implications would be.
There are two problems with your premise. 1) Setting a limit doesn't change anything. The bank is still charged the same percentage rate for depositing the change. 2) The bank doesn't regulate the fee they must pay. The supplier does. Chris
Found out today that one of my free credit unions is going to start charging 8% next month. Now I am down to two free credit unions, but one does charge 2% on all amounts over $200.
Nope, I already had contingencies for that possibility. One is I don't roll search as much lately but I also have other institutions taking coin for no fee. Talking to the tellers today at that branch they have shared that coin deposits have gone down dramatically and that they have lost some commercial customers. Frankly the fee at 8% is just quite a shock, not 2%, 5% or some percentage after a certain some like $200 - flat 8% even on kid deposits of say $13 and some change. If I didn't have fee free machines I would use Coinstar since I have Amazon prime and can just use the code for 100% of the value of the coin deposited into the machine. I have done that a few times when I knew I was going to buy something on Amazon.
