TD Bank, Still Stealing Customers Foreign Coins

This weekend I seen 1 of the many HUGE bags of foreign coins TD Bank steals from their customers of their coin machine. I have posted about this years ago, but for those that are not aware the TD coin machines have magnets in them that catch a lot of foreign change. Multiple times a day this magnet gets picked by tellers and the coins are put in a large clear bag and put into the safe. When that large bag gets filled the armored guards pick it up. Where it goes from there, a TD manage has told me ..."nobody knows", another has told me it gets donated to the special olympics.
This is happening on a massive scale if you consider how many branches they have across the country. I first noticed this in 2010 and nothing has changed. 99% of customers are not aware of the hidden magnet. Foreign change that does not stick to the magnet is "sometimes" returned through the return slot. I say sometimes because more than 50% of the time the return slot is rigged in such a fashion where the coins get stuck in the machine because they make the pvc tube slot to short. I've noticed this in the majority of TD banks.
This type of fraud may seem like no big deal, but it is being done on a massive level and I would imagine to the tune of millions of dollars.

 

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Relatively few foreign coins are iron or steel. I'd say that it is likely all machines handling coins, be they vending machines or change counters, have some form of magnetic trap for fake coins.

Since there is no possible way of reuniting these coins with their owners, a donation to some charity seems fair, The value involved must be minimal.

 

Or they are just selling them to a foreign exchange wholesaler. Since TD "Toronto Dominion Bank" is a Canadian company they could be just shipping the coins back to Canada since most of them are probably Canadian anyway.

 

I saw a bunch of them when something got stuck on my coin count.

I asked for them and the woman acted like I was some alien creature.

 

It is not uncommon to find 2 handfuls of coins on the hidden magnet at any given time, often totaling over $4 in Canadian alone. The branch employees are clueless as to where this $ is going. It gets picked up by the armored trucks and disappears. The value is not minimal. I have seen the filled bags from a few branches from Maine to NY. These bags are not filled with fake coins. I am a customer and have used those machines many, many times and have had coins stolen by these machines. There are no signs on the machines about the magnets that steal foreign coins. I have seen senior citizens cashing in jars and wondering where their foreign coins went because they thought they would be returned through the return slot.

 

Hold up buddy, do you know how little sense this makes. First off as previously stated most coins aren't magnetic, sure some coins get stuck there, but not a huge amount, and even in some did they would get knocked away by the sweep of coins. Then they are sorted where a fair amount get sent into U.S. coin bags. There is a few that get rejected at best. Most likely you saw months maybe even years of collection. Like you said you made another thread abou this years ago. I've seen these machines before, they is no bag just for reject coins. But let's assume your whole story is true, millions of dollars?!?? Do you know how much money it would cost to sort all that? That would take away an potential profits. TD bank isn't stealing anything because the customers are giving the coins to them.

 

Is it really that hard to sort your coins before going to the bank? Anyone who does not pick out the foreign coins ahead of time is just giving them away.

 

I agree that it would take a few weeks to fill up a bag as big as the ones I have seen. Maybe less in the nyc branches I used to frequent. There may be no bag for reject coins but there is a bag for the magnet coins and the ones that get returned through the broken slots. They value of each full bag has got to be worth over $500. I have seen many of these bags full and have even offered to buy them a few times.
Yes, it would be easy enough for me or you to pull the foreign out, but what about grandma or the disabled that may not be able to see them? They get stolen plain and simple. They go in the machine and no not come back out. Customers are not giving this change to the machine, they are exchanging it. This is happening to many customers every day for over 5 years now.

 

There are 1,100 branches. Maybe 900 have these coin machines. Say on average each branch fills a bag worth $500 in foreign coins every 3 months (which is being conservative), that's $450,000 every 3 months, or 1.8 million a year. This has been going on for at least 5 years. So yes, millions have been stolen.

 

If you're the type who would characterize it as "theft." Me, I prefer the term "Stupidity Fee." If you're such a featureless drone that you can't tell the difference between US and foreign coinage, well, apparently your education to a "minimal level of knowledge to be functional in modern society" requires payment.

 

Let's pretend your numbers are accurate, you think that it cost nothing to get those coins back into U.S. Dollars? Any income from these would quickly be taken away by the massive amount it would cost to process them and then try to sell them. Any even if these numbers are true and they are making money off it, the people who turned those coins in rightfully handed them over, and if you want to say they didn't know the machine didn't take non-us coins, it says on the starting screen that the machine does not take foreign coins!

 

I am more concerned about a meteorite hitting my car while I am driving.

 

No wonder nobody can understand what kind of coins the machine doesn't take!

"Foreign"

 

Hey, that's happened before, see here, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peekskill_meteorite
And I'm pretty sure insurance won't cover it.

 

I'm with Dave! If someone is too lazy or too dumb, then it's their fault.

By the way, @HowardStern , have you ever cashed in foreign currency through your bank? You have to sort everything by country and denomination. How many employees do you think it would take to sort these coins at 900 branches? I'm sure the banks can find better ways to make money.

Chris

 

First, what's the percentage of foreign coins circulating among everyday US coins? Maybe 0.1%? You make it almost sound like most people taking their jars of coins to these machines have around a 25% foreign mix. Are these people International Airline Pilots with lot's of layovers? Where is all this foreign coinage coming from? I don't know of a lot of older people with a high percentage of foreign coins in their piggy banks from all the traveling they do.

My guess, most people just throw their foreign coins in with the US coins in hopes that they get counted as US. If not, oh well. They can't exchange them anywhere else.

Yes, I'm sure there is a higher percentage of Canadian coin in general circulation near the Canadian border. But I seriously doubt this is as big of a problem as you try to make it out.

I would be concerned if the actual count was coming out well below my estimated count on a regular basis. I would probably count the coins myself and then compare that count to what the machines gave. If that count was off quite often, I'd start raising a big stink about it.

 

I would sell the foreign coins by weight, online. I have in the past and was happy with every sale.

 

I have seen many euro coins in every nyc branch. In Maine I see no euros but lots of Canadian. I have tried to buy the huge bags filled with euros. I have been offered many handfuls of free euros and Canadians when I question the magnet, and the coins that fall through the broken return slots. I no longer accept them because I now see them as stolen property.

 

They do take them, they just don't give them back.