What Noisy Cats Are We

Have you seen the new Bank Of America ATMs? They’re awesome! When it comes to deposits, they automatically count your cash, as well as scan in your checks for you. This involves a lot less mess has the potential to be a lot more accurate. I made a couple of deposits when they converted the machine near my place in Brighton, MA over a few weeks ago and it was perfectly accurate with the cash, and I only had to correct one check. Two problems I have seen so far, one minor and one ohcrapthisreallysucks!.

First off, if you have multiple check deposits, you cannot deposit them all at once. This is no big deal most of the time, but the other day we had to stand in line for over 5 minutes while a guy deposited many checks. This is a nuisance for me but I can see it becoming a big issue for big ATM check depositors if all the BoA machines are converted this way.

More importantly, it DOES NOT LIKE ALL CHECKS! My house mate is currently unemployed and we have both been trying to deposit her first unemployment check (before direct deposit kicks in) on many of the new Bank Of America ATM machines. The machines will not accept the check at all. After multiple tries on three different machines (Framingham, MA, Allston, MA, and Brighton, MA.) It’s very frustrating and we now need to seek out an older envelope-based BoA ATM to do the deposit, or manually make the deposit at a branch when it is open, which is a PITA.

This is just crazy, and I would think that Bank Of America has heard about this issue already. I did some Googling and haven’t seen anything, though. I assume they tested these new ATMs thoroughly before deploying them, but I’d think that this craziness of depositing an unemployment check here in MA wouldn’t be so difficult.

Has anyone else had problems with the new ATMs? Any idea what number to call at Bank Of America to notify them of this issue?