Denied a Silver Coin at Bank

OK, well, sounds like you're just getting your feet wet (i.e., starting out). Let me give you some good advice. In this game, you want to let tellers like that roll off your shoulders. Sometimes you'll even get downright insolent tellers, in which case you might call in the manager on those, especially if it's in one of your branches, as no customer deserves that. Short of those insolent types, you want to try to take them as you find them, in stride, and don't get too riled. Having said that, here are a couple tips you might try. These banks have "reject" coin. That is to say, foreign coin, medals and tokens, that are rejected by their counting machines. Do you know what they do with that? Many of them simply toss it. If you can, see if a teller will hold it for you. If they will, you'll see, you won't believe some of the stuff they're tossing. Another tip, see if you can get them to call you when they get customer-wrapped coin. Years ago my little guy hit an entire collection, cents through halves, in a box, like they were gift-wrapped with everything but the pretty pink bow on it. Sometimes those wrapped-coin really pay off. Good luck!

 

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Hand wrapped roll coins, especially in the older wraps, are the only kind I ask my bank for. Times are tough for some people and they are collecting coins from around the house or in jars that they drop their change in, wrapping them and bringing them to the bank to exchange for currency. My bank doesn't have a coin machine, so the only way they accept coins is in rolls, and it's pretty amazing what you can find in those rolls. I haven't hit the jackpot, but I have found silver and foreign coins. My bank also doesn't like $2 bills, half dollars, or dollar coins so they more than happy to give them to anyone who asks. I'm on good terms with the bank manager, so she encourages the tellers to work with me, again I've been using the same little bank for 20 years.

After I search the rolls I give the coins to my daughter who uses a credit union that has a machine similar to Coinstar. You dump your change into the machine and it prints out a receipt that she brings to the teller to get bills. She also checks the shoot for rejected coins, which are mostly foreign.

 

I worked at a bank as a bank teller and the branch manager I worked for allowed me to set aside coins or currency that I wanted for my collection. The only conditions were I could not be sorting through it and looking while customers were waiting in line and I could not "buy" it by myself (I had to transfer it to another teller and withdraw it from them...to follow bank policy that I not mess with my own personal account).

So, I kept a small area of my drawer separate (I found a small piece of wood so I could separate one section into 2) and I kept all my "stuff" in that spot. It was out of sight from the general public since it was in the back of the drawer. Anything that was not in that specific spot was free game for customers to ask for. In my opinion, the teller in the OP should have set that coin aside so customers could not see it if they wished to keep it. Leaving it in the tray on the counter is too visible and could create an upset customer...as it did in this case. The teller didn't do anything wrong in setting it aside for themselves...but they should have done it more discreetly IMHO.

 

Isn't that the truth! Don't get me started on Customer Service! Does that even exist.

 

Reminds me of the thread of the one person who used to work at a convenience store and pull the coins from the till. Then had 2 new rolls from the bank of DD dimes .. or something like that .. and wanted sue the person that took them from him 20+ odd years ago.

 

Yeah, I started this a few months ago. First with $2 bills, and now (within the last 2 weeks) halves and dollar coins.

I wasn't too riled. My apologies if my original post in this thread made it seem like I was seriously ticked off. I wasn't. Just more stunned that, like someone else stated, it wasn't more discreet. I wasn't aware that tellers could keep items from customers, especially after the customer saw it. Anyway, it's all water under the bridge. No worries.

Sadly, my bank and my wife's bank (where she works) do not accept customer-wrapped coins. I'm not sure what my bank does, but my wife's bank has a coin machine where customers put their loose stuff in and get a receipt. Any reject coins get dispensed below the machine and the customer (usually) takes them.

I believe many banks have gotten burned too often on customer-wrapped coins, so they now rely on the coin machines.

That's good to know that tellers are permitted to do that. I wasn't sure.

Thank you. That was the point of my original post/rant.

 

As a follow-up to all of this, I visited one of my "regular" bank stops today to get their $2 bills. I also asked if they had any halves or dollar coins. No dollars, but the teller put up 5 halves, and told me that the one is probably silver. She said she didn't think it was pure silver, and I told her it's probably only 40%. She said that the tellers there sometimes keep coins like that for their kids or grandkids, but I was welcome to have it. I thanked her and happily got my 37 $2's and halves and told them I'd probably be back next weekend. They said they hope so as long as I take their evil $2 bills. LOL.

 

Honestly, if I had left a coin in the tray like that and a customer saw it...I probably would have let the customer have it and been annoyed at myself for letting it be seen (I wouldn't let them know that). I personally wouldn't have told the customer no.

 

"Pitiful" is a good word to describe them... Go elsewhere!

 

I stopped at a Chase in Newark, California back in 2010. I could see this fat stack of silver halves in a tray on a counter behind the teller. I asked if I could buy them and the teller said "no" and that she was going to keep them for herself. I was just passing through the area and I wasn't about to argue with her so I just left. The edges were bright and shiny as well. There's no telling what good finds I would have had if I was allowed to buy them.

 

I stop at several banks regularly to ask for Half Dollars. Not too long ago I was asking at one of them, the teller had a few and he knows I'm a regular requester of Halves, so he also offered to check with the other tellers to see if they had any too. He came back to his window, told me he had $17 worth and started counting them for me. One of the coins he got from another teller had a bright silver edge and he picked it out, kept it in his closed hand, and told me there was $16.50. I asked him what he had kept in his hand and he told me that it was just a coin that didn't belong with the others. When I told him things like that could be of interest to me and asked if I could at least see what it was, he didn't want to show it to me and just repeated that it didn't belong with the others. I asked him what it was about this coin that he wouldn't even let me see it, and he reluctantly showed me a Franklin Half and told me that he saves stuff like this.

Normally I don't have a problem with tellers saving coins for themselves, in fact I sometimes think it would be cool to be a teller just because of the chance to do that! I have a good rapport with other tellers that like to show me some of their finds from time to time and we've shared some good stories.

So I started thinking... this isn't a teller saving coins from his tray for himself, this is a guy that went on my behalf to another teller to get Halves for me and now wants to keep one. And he does this right in front of me and then tries to conceal it.
When I reminded him that one reason he sees me in the bank asking for coins is the hope that I might find something exactly like this, he did let me have it.

I guess my point is: Even if a bank's policies allow tellers to exchange coins for themselves, It's just bad business to do this in front of a customer that's requesting those coins. At least be a little discreet about it, or customers will just be needlesly dissapointed like some on this thread

 

So do you just go up and ask them if they have any 2 dollar bills and if they do, you just give them equivalent back out of your account?? Interesting, never thought to do that. I love 2 dollar bills. Keep them all the time. Now i know how to get more. Laura

 

Nobody around here wants $2 bills. And everyone looks at you funny or pokes fun at you if you have them. As everyone in the Portland area knows. They give them out at the strip club there

 

So any strange stains on one. Makes you wonder

 

Just read this entire thread and what stood out to me is how many $2 bills seems to be around. I also bank at a small rural bank and have given up asking for them because they have never had one in all the years I have been asking. I have got halves and dollars but far more often then not they don't even have any of those. There is a store in town which gives half dollars as change so I am wondering if they get them all.

 

my credit union has bunches of the $2. You can ask for a new strapped bundle and get them, no problem. They have told me that they order stock the $2 around the holidays as many people like to give them out as gifts.

 

One Chase branch I used to visit had a policy that employees could not pick out the silver coins (they would hold them for me and sell at face value). The TD branch I now use allows the employees to pick out the silver....none for me at TD!

 

This is seriously off-topic, but you have one of the most beautiful (handsome) dogs I have ever seen!

 

Thanks

 

That's hilarious!

Anyway, that reminds me of this story of a man who went to jail for using $2 bills: