Question On Bank ATMs

[AlphaMale]

Id like to ask a question to those in this list who are better qualified than me:

It concerns the 'accepted' but still enormously annoying, to say the least, practice of banks in turning off their ATMs on 15s and 30s, which are paydays.

Do they do this because they want to avoid a 'mini-bankrun' (if so they'd probably have the law to answer to as they are effectively denying their accountholder's money), or is it their 'system cannot handle it' (which, in this day and age of powerful computers just doesn't make sense) or is it this :

Someone told me that among number of members of ATM bank networks there are a disproportionate number of ATM machines amongst them. Bank A for example may have hundreds of ATM machines compared to Bank B, with only 30 or 50 for example.

Come payday however Bank A turns off their machines so that ppl would be forced to withdraw their dough from Bank B ATM, therefore making at least some money from the cross bank charges. Does this make sense? And if so, its illegal right?

Whatever the answer may be, somehow these banks continue to get away with being a nuisance in turning off their machines on these dates. And like sheep we just learned to 'adjust' by doing our ATMing before or after those dates. Dapat hindi ganon! That's our money and we should be able to access it any !@$*#%+:< time we want, di ba? I want an explanation! Can someone enlighten me?

[lupuS]

As far as I know, there is no law or regulation which requires ATMs to stay open. Banking laws governing "business hours" pertain only to branches (with tellers and other similar people) and not ATMs.

But I will check to see if new regulations have been implemented.

If, in your example, you already know that Bank A observes the practice you describe, why should you give your business to Bank A? Aren't you better off putting your money in Bank B?

Further, if everyone and his brother are withdrawing money every 15th and 30th, why should you join them? On other days, the lines might be shorter, and holduppers might be fewer.

[LadyMarmalade]

i work for a bank and i've seen how longgggg the over-the-counter line gets on paydays. i've asked people why they prefer withdrawing over-the-counter when they have the convenience of their atm cards. i found out from asking both them and some of the bank officers, that indeed, it's true. some banks on paydays, do not let other banks, although they're of the same atm group (e.g. megalink, banknet, etc) withdraw from their atms. this they say, is to give priority to their "own" clients meaning those that have bank accounts with them.

i don't think this is fair at all and i hope somebody looks into it REAL soon.

[Trey]

i've worked in the ATM programming team for a top unibank a few years ago. in our (their) case, they don't deliberately shut ATMs down on payday. while it's true that they have the most ATMs in their consortium (and therefore "can't risk" having lots of offline machines), they also make it a point to monitor _every_single_ ATM_ in their network, esp those with huge txn volumes, in anticipation for the possibilty that it just might go into "system loop" and eventually shut down, which *does* happen. but the thing is, a critical part of any ATM transaction is the comm line (ie, phone line that xmits the txn), which most of the time simply just can't keep up with the volume. sad to say, there's so much more left to be desired in our telecoms industry, esp in the provinces.

that said, i think it's fair to say that banks try their darndest for their ATMs to stay up during paydays. it just doesn't make business sense why they would do otherwise, since they *do* earn money off your every single txn, including even balance inquiries.

also, bank networks penalize any member bank that fails to stay up n% of the time in any given period. and that's just one of the many deterrents against slacking that they impose among themselves. you'd be surprised how critically *****y these *member* banks are against each other. i guess my point is, there's internal balance and check among themselves, so it can't be that Bank A can get away with doing what you mentioned.

as for the giving-priority-to-their-own-clients thing, i don't see why interbank txns could substantially impact the host bank's own system. because all a host bank does if it "sees" a card acct that belongs to another bank in the network is, it just "switches out" that txn and lets the other bank do all the processing. then it just waits for the reply msg (approved/denied), and closes the txn accordingly. each bank has a separate, dedicated comm line for switch-out txns, so txns coming from its "own" clients should still come through with no problem. and besides, network peeps monitor each bank's online status, and they don't allow a bank to go offline unless it's a severe technical problem.

meanwhile, it could be just your luck if a machine shuts down on you. :) but there are other ways to get around this problem and avoid it altogether. first, conserve your cash on hand, and when shopping, use POS (paylink, EPS, etc) whenever possible. it's free, and it doesn't take anything off your daily withdrawal limit. second, avoid ATMs located in malls and such other crowded areas, if you can help it. they have the most tendency to "break down", plus, waiting lines are a beetch. third, if you pay some accts on a regular basis, enroll them using your bank's auto payments. that way you can just transfer your funds over the phone or over the net. lastly, during paydays, don't use the ATMs at all. use common sense. :)

[lupuS]

I've checked with some bank officers and confirm that there is no law or regulation requiring or specifying minimum operating hours for ATMs. As I said above, such "banking hour regulations" affect only branches. ATMs, even those located in shopping malls, are not considered branches.

As to the statement that "That's our money and we should be able to access it any !@$*#%+:< time we want, di ba?", my comment is that it is only partly true. It is our money, but by depositing it with the bank, we cannot make it accessible at any time. When the banks are closed, our funds are technically inaccessible, at least as of now.

[AlphaMale]

Hi Lupus,

You're right. directly after writing my comments I had given it some thought and yes, banks aren't legally obliged to keep their systems online, more so if they are doing their darndest to make it so.

Re your comment about why shouldnt I just switch to another bank, well, I experienced most of these situations when I was still employed (Im self-employed now), with my employers choosing the banks where they put my salary. So I did not have any say in that, but in my three jobs where I had accounts in three separate banks I experienced these situations in ALL of them. I admit also that I made an assumption that most people experience this but this is only because I hear gripes from other people as well with other banks. Like I said earlier, it seems to be accepted.

And now, that's what bothers me. Ok, I can adjust, and so can several thousands of other people. In fact I had and continue to, again just like everyone else. It doesn't take an economics major to learn to be careful with one's money around those dates. Yup, that's all well and good. But my questions continue :

1.) Why do we have to?
Inspite of one's best efforts, it CAN and WILL happen when you're out there in the city needing cash and you cannot get any from ATMs. At that time when you're out on a date or maybe get a flat tire (like in my case two weeks ago), and it just so happened that you need a little more than what you have, it's not gonna be there. At that given moment, trust me you are not going to stand there and say "Oh okay, my bank isn't obliged to keep these machines open anyway..." No sir, believe me those are NOT the words you are going to say...

2.) Lastly, WHY has this situation persisted for so long?
About that bit of news where Bank A and Bank B are in cahoots, I believe it wouldn't have come about if those banks had gotten their acts together and solved the problem noon pa. I'd like to believe such an agreement doesn't exist, but situations such as these bring about hearsay and make people talk nasty. Also, it just doesn't make sense to me that any company will allow such a situation to continue. If something's broke, you should expect them a fix in the near future di ba? But the situation continues to prevail to this day! So much so that nasanay na tayo!

Whew. Ok, done ranting. Thanks for the POS tips, Trey.

[lupuS]

AlphaMale, I'm sorry if I sounded unsympathetic to your situation. That was not my intention. I was a bank customer long before ATMs were operating in this country, and all I can say is that people got by without them, even in situations similar to what you've faced.

Which is not to say that we should remain in the dark ages. Definitely not. I, too, have ATM accounts. In fact, I have three. My thinking is that it is good to hold these banks up to high performance standards, but it is prudent to not rely on them 100%. In other words, we should always have Plan B. And in the case of the flat tire, or the date, practical approaches for Plan B include credit cards, one of those "Wheeler's Club" type services, increasing the amount of cash you carry, or even calling a friend or family member (with a cellphone - when ATMs didn't exist here, neither did cellphones).

This is not very clearly written; maybe I'll edit it later. But what I'm trying to say, I think, is that despite all the problems we note with these systems, they're still generally better than they were when they started.