Just having been down to the village to get some cash from the ATM it brought back memories of my time in Banking Branch and the little problems we had with some of the early machines. One problem we had to fix pretty quickly was the fact that the machines did not check what was put in to the card reader slot until it was a fair way in to the machine. The machines now will only let you introduce your card with the mag stripe in the correct place and does not let more than about 5 mm in to check this is correct. This change was made to stop the problems we and the competing ATM manufacturers had with ATMs that were sited near fast food chains. It was a regular thing every morning to get calls to all the machines near certain food outlets to fix them. This was due to the fact that the local hooligans had discovered that if you fed a sachet of ketchup or salad cream etc. in to the slot it pulled it in till all the contents were compressed to the end and then it would burst showering passers-by and also the card reader mechanism. One machine in Glasgow had a call every day till the engineering change was fitted to stop this acceptance of any item.
The second story was told to me by the IT manager of one of the big banks during our regular progress meetings. It was a story that had progressed through the bank branch unit up the chain of management to the highest level. It seems that one of the branches had sent a cash card to one of its old and trusted customers who not long after this came in to her branch to hand the card back. The branch manager got involved when the customer complained and said she would no longer be using the card because of the language the machine used. She was ushered in to the manager’s office and given tea and asked about her problem. It seems that when she tried to use the machine for the first time the card had been taken in and then been immediately rejected, she tried again and the same thing happened, on the third attempt the ‘machine’ told her to f**k off as it was broken and try again later! She gave the date and approximate time and we were then able to trace the CE who was inside the ATM with the ‘OUT OF USE’ sign up which did not block the card slot and so he had to get his hands out of the mechanism very quickly every time the card was introduced and it all whirred in to action. Needless to say this resulted in yet another engineering change to block the card slot when in out of service mode.
The third ATM tale was also feedback from the bank about one of the ways people stole money, they had spent time and ingenuity fabricating a metal clip which they would introduce in to the money slot and then retire to a safe distance. The next customer would put in their card and pin and the machine would dispense cash but it would not appear, it would be held in the clip. When they had walked away our likely lad would then go back and retrieve the clip and cash and then refit the clip. This would go on for an evening and the next day the branch would have many irate customers demanding their refunds etc. The police got involved and staked out the machine but the perpetrator did not return but moved on. He was caught by the fact that he only moved up the road to the next machine of the same type so after 3 nights the police knew which was his next likely machine and waited for him and caught him in the act. Again various mods were made to the ATMs to try to stop this but there were lots of inventive guys out there so it was a constant war of attrition.
The next criminal activity associated with ATMs was where the lads would steal some heavy gear and nick the whole machine from the wall by demolishing around it. This still goes on as on the news recently in Devon they had pulled the whole corner of the bank down and made off with the machine. The kit they used to do it was also stolen.
