Unsafe Safe Deposit Boxes?

it should be ok as long as you are not advertising anything or giving away personal information. but you are right that is what can and does happen. thats why you should get sdb where the following will explcitly not occur. they are very expensive though

 

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The only benefit I see is that if it's in the bank, a burglar couldn't put a gun to your head and tell you to open the safe.

 

LOL

Anyone ever watched 'the bank job'?

 

I'm not sure why the bank would drill a box if not visited recently. They bill me for it and I pay the fee. I would think this would be enough to inform them that the box is still active.

 

Yeah, the story posted didn't say anything about whether or not the fees were still paid.

edit: P91's story

 

The point was missed by a couple of respondents, the point was my fees had been paid, I had not visited the box in about 5-6 months(it is a secondary box with less valuable stuff). The bank had errantly marked my box for drilling out, when in fact they were to drill out the box next to it. Of course I was a bit chaffed by the whole affair.

 

A lot depends on the bank and the caliber of people they hire. Some banks hire kids right out of high school who are not mature. The new hire is just looking for a paycheck not a career. They have a la-dee-da attitude as they stare out the window and twist their hair. The only important thing to them is closing time.

 

In all likelihood, they would have caught the mistake before the drilled the box. There is a bunch of paperwork involved in the drilling process and at some point they should have noticed it was the wrong number. Those key hole plugs aren't to mark which box is for drilling, it's to prevent someone from opening their box. They wouldn't have just walked in and drilled the box with the blue dot.

 

Thank you for your input, but actually the teller said it had been marked for drilling, because it had not been paid for. I advised her that indeed it had, about 8 months ago, and I had been in it about 5-6 months ago. I asked her to check her records, and indeed they had misapplied the blue dot things.

If they had drilled it by mistake, you can bet my attorney would be on it.

 

How could anybody keep their coin collection in a bank safe? This just doesn't make any sense to me. A bank safe is a small little box that doesn't hold anything but a few papers. How small is your coin collection anyways to fit into one of those little boxes. Don't most coin collections weigh into the 100's of pounds?

 

Belly Up Bank ?????

Recentley Indy Mac went belly up. It would be interesting to see if people who had Safety Deposit boxes throug that establishment faired well when trying to retrieve their stuff out of the boxes.

I read an article in out of California (before the bank crash) that people'e safety deposit boxes were being unlawfully confiscated by the state when people did not "check up" on their boxes after a certain amount of time. This happened even when people were still paying, and had contact info on file with the bank. Apparently California was in possession of over 2 billion dollars worth of personal goods without any clearcut way of returning those goods to bank cusomers????

Anyways question is.... If a bank goes bankrupt, can you get your items out of a safety deposit box?????

 

Banks lend out the money you deposit, this is the reason why they need insurance if everyone tries to get their money out at once.

They don't lend out the contents of safety deposit boxes, so they don't have any reason not to return you your deposit box contents. (barring any nefarious federal agents)

 

Do people even still go inside banks? I can't even remember the last time I saw the inside of my bank. Guess a SDB wouldn't fare well with me, regardless of any benefits in safety...or not.
Guy~

 

Have you seen the larger boxes they have available? And you can even get more than one if you are really really nice to the bank manager.

 

I will never get a safety deposit box... banks are not your friend.

And unlikely a scenario as it is, if there ever was some sort of major economic or social collapse, do you honestly think the bank will be opening their doors to let people come in and empty their boxes?

The banks are a business and not your friend.

 

Eventually yes. But only after the period of time whilst the bank is being sequestered. Sometimes it can be a few months. When a bank fails, safety deposit boxes are on the low end of the totem poll. Think of Indymac and people that had over $600K, who stand to lose as much as $500K of their money.

I cannot imagine having that kind of money and putting it in one bank. Even old Hetty Green was not that stupid.

 

Banks lend out many money at multiples of their cash reserves.... This is why the FDIC does not insure all deposits, or multiple accounts by the same person. There is only a fraction of depositors funds available to be given back. Hence the term "franctional reserve banking". A run on a bank gauruntees a bank failure because of this system.

The question is not wether material items stored in Safety Deposit boxes is lent out like money. The question is are those goods retrievable in the event a a bank becoming insolvent? Like you said thse items are not insured. Who's property remains in the safety deposit box after a bank goes belly up?

Has anyone looked into this on their box policies? I am not interested in theory... we know the goods still exist, but what is the procedure if this happens?

 

Responsible banking institutions in history did not lend in multiples of their reserves, they steered a conservative course. I was reading an account on the Stacks website about a bank run caused no doubt by competitor banks in New Orleans against Canal Bank in 1842, causing people to pull accounts, and redeem banknotes etc. when at the end of the day Canal Bank still had $500.000 in gold coin reserves, against a nearly eliminated liability caused by the run.

This was in 1842, $500000 would be a huge fortune for that time, and a reason that Canal Bank still exists as a part of BankOne(which probably is not so fiscally conservative).

 

I do not work in a bank, but I do drill safe deposit boxes on a regular basis for many banks and here's MY take on what all is being discussed.

Banks rent out the spaces inside their vault to customers for a profit. The box itself is secure to a point because it typically requires 2 keys to unlock it...one held by the bank and one that s held by the renter. The real security is the vault these boxes are mounted inside of.

Banks use tabs for different purposes on safe deposit boxes. Black typically means the customer has passed away and the box is waiting on the estate to become probated so it can be opened. Blue, red or orange can mean the box rent is past due or ready to drill. Green usually means it is available for rent.

When they call us to drill a box, they normally schedule a time for us and the customer to be there at the same time unless the customer can not be located. When we actually drill, the customer (if they can be found) and a bank rep must be present. We will NOT drill a box without a bank rep in the vault.

Once the box is drilled and the door is open, the customer (if available) is the only one that is supposed to physically remove the bond tin from the box. If the box was surrendered, the bank rep removes the tin.

If the box was surrendered or the customer was not available, the extire contents gets inventoried by a rep and a manager, contents sealed and stored in the main vault and the inventory signed off on by both parties that did the inventory. I really don't know what happens to the property after that point.

Contents are not insured by the bank at any rate. They typically have private rooms or area's that you are taken to so that you can put items in or remove items from your tin. The bank has absolutely no idea what is in any of the boxes and would have no way to insure what they don't know about.

As far as the govt opening boxes at random searching for items in the UK...yes, that is almost true. It did happen, but not like most think. The boxes they seized were not in banks, but private vaults that contained boxes that were rented out to the public. Someone tipped off the govt about criminals storing cash and drugs in these boxes. They were then seized.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7442644.stm

We have had times when we had to drill boxes in bank vaults by court order when it pertained to a criminal investigation. Of course the customer was not present, but the police were.

 

I have a story about safe deposit boxes, but not at a bank.

I work in an Atlantic City casino and we have safe deposit boxes available for hotel guests. Every 5 years we inventory the safe deposit boxes. Undoubtedly we find boxes that have no key, but the last person who had the box has checked out of the hotel. In these cases, we drill the boxes and seize the contents. Most boxes are either empty or contain something silly. One guy wrote on a piece of paper "your casino took my money, I'm keepin the key."

However, every so often you find something. We drilled one box and found almost $100,000 in cash (all Benjamins). We frantically searched to find the last card for that box and only found a card that was over 3 years old. We looked at the customer's casino play and he did not have any in the past year, but he had a $50K credit line. Desperate, we called the phone number in our system. The man lived in Georgia. When he answered, I asked him if he still had the key to the box. He said of course. I then asked him if he was aware that he had almost $100K in the box. He again said of course. A little peeved, I asked him why he would leave that much money in a hotel safe deposit box. He responded with a chuckle and a very smart response of "where do you want me to put it, in a bank." Tired of his nonsense, I told him he had a week to retrieve his money or we would keep it (totally bluffing, that would be illegal). He flew in the next day, took his cash and left. Didn't even lose any of it in the casino.