Overseas card retained by ATM - bank lies and tells us nothing they can do

StickyIcky

WARNING SPOILERS - IRISH VS ALL BLACKS GAME - Sunday 24th Nov 2013

Secondly sorry of the long post I have a too lazy / didn't read at the bottom.

Look away now if you haven't caught on this match or haven't already had the ending ruined by people posting on Facebook

The story:

I was in the pub minutes away from getting my heart broken by Ireland losing to the All Blacks in the final minute of the game. My wife who's from overseas has popped out to the ATM.

Shortly after my wife comes into the pub distraught the ATM swallowed her card. She's upset because it means she'll have to return to her country to get a new card. I say it's okay we'll go get your card from the branch first thing monday morning.

The next morning I call the cards lost and stolen line before the branch opens and they advise me to go into the branch asap before the card is destroyed.

I leg it down to the bank with wife in tow. The lady behind the customer service desk says the won't be return the card as its' very possible it has been skimmed suffered fraudulent activity.

My wifes immediately calls her bank and my wifes bank says there's no problem with her card or account at all and no reason why the bank should have retained her card. With this information in hand I return to the bank with her in tow.

We go back into the bank and I ask for the manager. I see the manager come out and he talks to the lady and another staff member behind a partition and I hear them quietly talking about us. My wife and I over hear one of the ladies with the manager say something like 'just tell him the card has been destroyed or that we can't open the machine'. I hear this and am starting to get infuriated.

I know the fate of my wife having to fly back to her country to get a perfectly working bank card reissued to her or not because of a faulty ATM matchine rests in the hands of people that seem hell bent on getting rid of me even if it means lying to me.

Long story short I tell the manager I heard what they were saying about saying the card has been destroyed and I said "even if it's in tiny pieces I'm not leaving without it." He told me I could sit here all day if I wanted but bank policy in fact "global bank policy" is if a card is retained it gets sent back to the bank the card came from. That they can find out the sort code from the card and they'll send it back to her branch in her country who can then give it back to her. My wife explained for her to get a new card would mean travelling back to her country, that she gets all her money from her investments into that card and if she didn't have any family or friends here how would she pay for a trip back to her country or food or anything. We told the manager we called her bank and there's nothing wrong with her card, that she has her passport here, we can show him we know the pin number, whatever it takes. The bank manager was having none of it and sent us away with the it's bank policy line. Even though I got him to admit that card right now was in that machine and if he wanted too he could go over and open it up and hand it back to us.

Eventually I gave up. I thought if this guy is not budging on his bank policy stance.

I then went home and called BOI telephone support said that because I'm not a BOI customer there's no way I can make a complaint. However BOI changed their tune when I posted on FB and Boards about this. Someone posted back saying they're sorry and to make it clear in their posts that BOI do listen to complaints from non customers.

So tomorrow someone from BOI is going to call me and I'd like some advice from you lot what I can say.

Is it legal for people who've absolutely no problem with their cards for them to be swallowed up and destroyed or shipped off by the banks?

I know for a fact it's completely within his power to open that ATM machine and find her card and return it. I know that he could swip the card through one of his machines and check if a CODE 10 comes up on it or not. We would be happy to get the guards involved and supply all the idea and documentation and proof of address to prove we're not two fraudsters. The ATM's probably have video cameras. She knows the pin number to the card she can prove the card is hers. It feels like really BOI couldn't be arsed to help us and have infact royally screwed us over by their crappy 'policy'.

Note there was no fraudulent activity on the card. More than likely the machine sucked the card in because my wife was taking too long, she said a man with a small dog was distracting her while she was trying to read the screen (English is her second language) and she took too long then the machine started beeping and sucked in her card.

I want to make sure when I speak to them tomorrow I know what I'm talking about. Going to call the Irish Payment Services Organisation in the morning and Citizens Advise too but want to get the ball rolling with you fine folk first

Too Lazy / Didn't Read?

Wife got card sucked in by ATM. Went into branch, branch fobbed me off and said to us there's no way on earth we're getting the card back. Wife would have to take a trip back to her country to get a new card actually in her bank with her documentation.

I'm going to speak to their complaints department tomorrow and I want to be armed with the right ammunition as to if it's legal for them to do this to us or not?

Shouldn't it be on the banks responsibility to prove to us there was some Code 10 or something on the card? They gave us no explanation just a bunch of probables and another repeated line about bank policy.

I don't think there is much you can do.

The card was swallowed by the ATM - the bank you went into might not know why - it isn't their card to be giving out - it presumably belongs to the issuing bank.

Are ye sure it wasn't a distraction theft?

StickyIcky

Nope the card was definitely sucked in by the machine. I would presume the card belongs more to my wife than to BOI and with the proper identification and proof the card should be returned to her. Even the person on the card lost and stolen line gave me this impression.

BuffyBot

Standard policy is that cards retained are destroyed when the machine is serviced (and therefore it generally isn't possible to return them) in most institutions.

Anyway, we're not here to provide legal advice, and thread duplication isn't welcome either.