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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;spotco2, post: 410283, member: 15035&quot;]I do not work in a bank, but I do drill safe deposit boxes on a regular basis for many banks and here&#039;s MY take on what all is being discussed.</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>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&#039;t know what happens to the property after that point.</p><p><br /></p><p>Contents are not insured by the bank at any rate. They typically have private rooms or area&#039;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&#039;t know about.</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7442644.stm" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7442644.stm" rel="nofollow">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7442644.stm</a></p><p><br /></p><p>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.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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