Cash-deposit machine 'ate up $800'
By Rachel Chan
ACCORDING to retiree A. P. Chong, he fed $2,800 in notes into a bank cash-deposit machine in Upper Cross Street only to find, to his horror, that the system had acknowledged a deposit of only $2,000.
After an investigation, DBS Bank maintained that that is all the 65-year-old fed in.
But Mr Chong is sticking to his story. He insists he was entrusted with $2,800 in savings by a few elderly relatives, and he was banking the sum into his decades-old POSB savings account.
He broke up the wad of cash into smaller instalments of $10 and $50 notes that June 10 evening, and fed each in turn into the machine, he said.
But, when the former accountant scrutinised the receipts issued by the machine, he found that they recorded a total deposit of only $2,000.
He called the bank's customer hotline an hour later to report the matter, and was told that the bank would need some time to conduct investigations.
Mr Chong, who said he has been using automated banking services for years, wanted prompt action.
"I asked the customer-service officer whether someone could open the machine promptly to find my missing $800, but was told that they (the staff) could not do that as the machines are serviced by an external vendor."
After almost a month, he received a two-page letter from the bank on July 8. It informed him that he had made seven transactions, totalling 16 $50 notes and 120 $10 notes, and that the cash-deposit machine (CDM) had not been faulty. Only $2,000 had been deposited.
The letter, which my paper saw, continued: "Had the machine experienced a fault during a transaction, it would be unable to accept further deposits unless this fault is rectified by our service engineers.
"No discrepancies were revealed during the reconciliation of our accounts for that CDM on that particular day.
"We hope that this would assure you that your cash deposits are appropriately recorded in your account."
Mr Chong is not convinced.
"A whole month has passed before presenting me with these findings. Why couldn't the bank check the machine immediately after I reported the incident? Anything could have happened during the time in between," he said.
When contacted, a DBS spokesman would say only that the bank "thoroughly investigated Mr Chong's case and has presented him with our findings".
DBS investigates customer claims using a combination of system logs, comparing the amounts keyed in by the customer against the money recovered from the machine, and scrutinising CCTV images, the spokesman added.
Ms K. S. Chu, 60, who runs a camera shop next to the row of POSB automated teller machines and the aforementioned CDM in Upper Cross Street, said that she has never had any problems depositing large sums of cash in batches.
"(The machine in Upper Cross Street) can handle transactions amounting to $2,000 or $3,000, no problem. But the receipt does take a while to come out of the machine sometimes," she told my paper.
When this reporter attempted to deposit cash in batches at the same CDM, it took so long for a receipt to be issued that a call was made to the DBS helpline.
A customer-service officer was able to rattle off details of every single transaction made in the past five minutes. She also promised that the problem encountered would be taken care of.
Meanwhile, Mr Chong continues to hope that the $800 he insists is at large will turn up.
"I've lodged another complaint with the bank, and will wait for them to get back to me," he said wistfully.
To prevent such incident happen again
