Banks: The good, the bad and the ugly!

I thought maybe this would be a good place for folks that want to share/exchange info on bank experiences during your coin hunting. It seems as of late I'm reading about folks having problems with placing orders, receiving orders, fees and the like. These stories I'm sure can help others to formulate who they'd like to choose for picking and dumping.

My story/question today has to do with dimes. I've noticed if I request a box of dimes with BofA, they are Brinks and plastic wrapped. I'm pretty much skunked every time, and am seriously only wanting to rim check when I receive a Brinks box. The plastic is a slight pain in the butt. Since I know there's probably not any silver at that point, I hardly want to fiddle with the plastic just to see if there are proofs or maybe that obscure '82 no mm.

If I'm able to get a box from TDBank, they seem to run with Loomis paper wrapped. I've had better luck finding silver there, and am required to open a whole roll to search it. I kinda like that element of surprise - to see that nice white shiny rim, ya know? My problem is I don't have an account with TD and won't be opening one. Some branches don't bother to ask if I have an acct, since I'm walking in with paper cash but I've actually been refused at other TDs.

I don't know what to do about it because the credit union where I dump doesn't do dimes by the box. They sell whole bags by the $1k. I'd really like to work more with dimes. Thoughts on paper vs. plastic, Brinks vs Loomis or suggestions?

 

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Ok! People are reading but no comments. I guess I'll keep talking.

I made an offering of 6 GIANT gourmet muffins to my local BofA today. In turn, they will be ordering 2 boxes of halves per week that I will be able to clear out in 4 days time. I think that's really great that they are actually working WITH me on this. Glad that a teller from another branch kinda put it out there to be straight forward with my CRH. I'm sure they will be very happy that I'm not dumping on them either. Wish me luck...hopefully I'll be back to posting results instead of long winded stuff.

 

It depends on the area. BoA is supplied by Dunbar in my area and they have the Strings & Sons wrappers for everything. 1st Niagra has clear wrapped dimes but never sell me a box because I'm not a customer. They sell me $50 - $100 at a time and I have searched several hundred with no silver. Someone must be cherry picking the rolls.

Loomis is terrible in my area. I have done exactly 4 boxes of dimes with no silver. They are a PITA to open. I have done over a dozen LOOMIS half boxes and have found 1 x 40%.

I find that tellers here in my area have no idea about these plastic wrapped dimes. They don't even want to taken them back, they make me roll them in paper or I just dump them in a machine. Weird.
HOTN

 

I definitely get strange looks when I return the plastic wrapped dimes to the credit union. Looks like my brain was fried when I put up that original post. TD uses NF String and Son. I managed to finagle a box from them today. What I don't get is - why is it such a big deal to sell a box of _____ to a non-customer, especially if they already have it on site with no need to special order? I mean, do they think people are coming in with counterfeit bills to buy the boxes? Monetarily, it's an even exchange. If they need to keep track, then sure...mark of some sort of spreadsheet to show you're now 1 less box. Looks like I have much to learn.

 

One of my dump banks is getting antsy. couple weeks ago they started asking for my ID everytime I dump which is 1k in halves a week. this last time the manager handled my dump and informed my that I have shorted them a couple times. would not say how much but more than a couple dollars. also did not attempt to pull it from my account balance. He advised me that they are waiting for info on how to work with me but expect that they will be issuing coin lock bags to me and will accept 1 $500 dollar bag a week.

I call BS on me shorting them as Full bank boxes should not be short. it's not like it was CWR's he also wouldn't say how much and didn't try to get the money from me.


it's just one PNC branch so no worries

 

Ok, so I wasn't trippin on my original msg. Depends on which TDBank you go to around here. Some have NF String and some Loomis, like yet another one that I finagled away from them today. I like how this teller handled me today. I kinda get a "i'm the boss" type feeling when I ask for a box of dimes and the teller turns around and says "oh, a box? You DO know that's $250, right?". As she's posing the question, I'm already counting up (5) $50 bills and just nod. She takes the money, I get my box - no questions.

Why can't life always be that easy?

 

You were doing $1k in a single dump? Not that there are any hard and fast rules for dumping, but doesn't that seem like a bit much? If I have it, I never do more than $500 in one shot, or will even spread $500 across 2 branches just to not raise any red flags.

 

I've had unopened dime boxes be short up to $2, not including foreigns. I think some wrapping machines are just more accurate than others as some banks are never off. Haven't seen any half dollar BWR's that are off though.

I think he's just trying to come up with an excuse to get rid of you.

 

I've dumped $2k a go before... just matters how tolerant they are.

 

Ha.. in michigan, we get shorted on every roll of dimes or quarters.. as they all have canadian in them. Canadian change is so intermixed that you get it back in change from all the fast food joints, ect... what annoys me is when the bank refuses to take a roll that hascanadian, that they gave me in the first place.

 

I'm thinking it's more likely that they just don't want to have to deal with you, and are trying to discourage you from coming there.

 

I'm using a local credit union for dumping since they have a free coin machine for its members. I was shocked the very first time I used it (not paying attention to the signs on it) when it kept kicking out the Canadian dimes from my box. I took all the rejects and presented them to the teller with my receipt and she said she wouldn't take them. When I asked her why, the teller that was shadowing her jumped in (turns out my girl was a trainee) and snippily said "we're a CREDIT UNION, not a COMMERCIAL bank and we don't do foreign coins." My jaw dropped - not only because of the reminder that Canada is considered foreign, but because of the attitude behind the delivery of that statement.

Most likely my Canadian coins will be going back to said fast food joints or something like CVS.

 

On another note, I'd complained in the "post your results" thread about having to close out a secondary dump bank do to non-notification of a 3% transaction fee for actual member to use their coin machine. I was also charged $10 to close the account since it had only been open for less than 90 days. I just couldn't let it go but needed to sleep on it for a few days before attempting to contact someone to air my grievances. I called the branch manager from the closest local branch this afternoon. I told her that I read all the policy info from the package I was given when opening the account and looked everywhere I possibly could on the website. There is no mention of this so called "early cancellation fee." I also told her about a very wonderful experience I'd had before the 3% fiasco to inquire about CWR halves. It was a shame to me that that particular person when above and beyond on that phone call to help me with all of my questions, which made me very happy to WANT to continue working with their bank, but then they turned around and hid info about their coin service and cancellation fees. She is majorly working her retention mojo. She is working on refunding the $10 to me and mentioned that a new branch will be opening soon which will be waiving coin service fees. The waiving of charges may also be spreading to branches across the board, so she'd like to me reopen the account. She was forward with me by asking how much I'd be dumping since I was forward with her about my CRH needs and is willing to work at dumps of $1k per month for her specific branch. Seems reasonable enough for me since there have multiple branches and that would bring me back up to 2 dump banks.

She'll be calling me back tomorrow with more info. I'll take the $10 if they give it back to me, and we'll see if I decide to go back with them. I'm definitely finding that folks are tending to come up with more workable solutions as long as I'm up front about my intentions. Kinda refreshing.

 

yeah, and I think I will let them win that battle so I don't loose the war. there are many PNC branches in my area 3 that I use regularly and the other 2 are very friendly. One has this really sweet teller that always tells me about her 6 year old neices collection. All it took was one package of Petridge Farms cookies and she is a friend for life. LOL

No reason to push the limits at this one branch and get my account closed loosing all branches.

 

I think I'm experiencing a coin hunter's nightmare right now! I'm at my dump branch and there's a dude ahead of me with a giant bucket of ccoins. I can HEAR the silver dropping in there! GAHHHH!

 

Good idea, I haven't done this in a while. I think I will pick up some of those Entemenns mini chocolate chip cookies for a bunch of my branches, and a few of my dump banks tomorrow at the store.

 

I would have tried to make him an offer if I saw any silver! Since he was dumping at face, you probably could have gotten them quite cheap too.

 

I've heard people dropping silver into the trays before pushing it in, and I always stop them and ask them if I can look through it.

 

Ugh...

So today I went to dump around 350 in halves and around 50 or 60 worth of other change at one of the banks near me. Once I was almost done pouring in change the bag fills up, and after the teller changes the bag I noticed that the machine didn't seem to be making any noise, so I figured it was done and printed out my ticket. Looking at the ticket, I see I'm only being credited for 300 in halves.

So by the time I figure out what's going on, there are already other people putting their money in the counting machine, but it's not working for them either. What happened was the machine jammed up, but now it had the last part of my dump mixed in with their coins. I mention this to the teller and ask the people behind me if they had any halves, to which they replied "just a few". The teller tells me that his manager is in a meeting and he will call me.

So now I'm waiting to hear back, I did call the teller again to inform him that I'm sure I'm missing 50-60 bucks from halves alone, and he told me that the people behind me's ticket had a lot of halves on it, and that he's still waiting to talk to the manager. If I was the teller I would have probably looked at the tickets and asked the people about the halves, but it looks like he just gave them the money.

What do you guys think I should do? The one thing I do have on my side is that I dump almost exactly the same amount of halves at that branch once or twice a week, so if they pull my previous coin machine tickets they could see. I'm willing to accept a few cents in uncounted coins with the volume I go through, it happens almost every day, but 50-60 bucks is a lot of money to lose

I guess the up side is that I ended up with 3 silver quarters and 2 silver dimes from the coin return...

 

Wonderful advice that was given to me a long time ago when dealing with possible difficult situations - when presenting your case to the manager "be gentle, but firm." If you have your own copies of previous dump receipts, I'd bring them along to present your case. The bank might view it as a slight hassle, but I'm sure they document all the info and may need to take a little bit of time to research and pull up your dump history. Of course, i'm sure you're hoping this won't happen again in the future, so I'd ask for a copy of their research if you don't already have it. If they don't refund the whole amount to you, I'd press to try to get some sort of reimbursement, perhaps they'll meet you halfway. That's a really tough one. I'm sorry it happened to you. Thank you for sharing your story.