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Super-ATMs Being Rolled Out
News.com has an article up looking at something I find interesting and somewhat confusing. The Vcom ATM is an attempt to make people's lives more convenient by adding unexpected functionality to the standard Teller Machine. Besides dispensing cash, new ATMs can fulfull the roles of PayPal (by sending money to people), bank (by cashing checks on the spot), and cellphone store (by selling Verizon services). From the article: "The Circle K and Exxon Mobil machines are far more basic than 7-Eleven's Vcoms, which have been called overengineered. Several dozen customers polled informally outside a 7-Eleven in Winter Springs, Fla., recently said that they had never used the Vcom inside, and one woman who said she did use it once to withdraw cash complained that it was 'confusing' and 'complicated,' and added that she would not use it again. 'There were just too many steps,' said the woman, Peggy Baker, who teaches French in Winter Springs. 'And the $1.75 transaction fee was too much--it was painful.' She said she was not interested in the other Vcom features, which require users to enroll and enter a Social Security number on a touch screen."
TFA
http://michaelsmith.id.au
If only they had it throw up a windows-like dialog box with "yes" or "no" they could get people to sign their live savings over to 7-11 very easily.
Sleep is futile.
Or is that too 'confusing' and 'complicated'?
ATMs are the MacDonalds of the banking world.
MacDonalds don't offer slow food.
Making an ATM offer slow services is not a good move; they just won't be used, in exactly the same way that very few people would buy a burger from MacDonalds if it took twenty minutes to cook.
The only upgrade I would like to see would be if they made it actually return money. But well, that's just me...
Actually, it's my 20cents. Harhar!
Can we have a link to the article?
= 442f6db28940ab38&ei=RLkvROmcMIP2owLY6oXGCQ&url=htt p%3A//www.taipeitimes.com/News/bizfocus/archives/2 006/04/02/2003300573&cid=1105507413&sig2=gMedfCfB_ 7_xnCSz_t4tKg
Never mind, here's one:
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct=us/0-0&fp
Get real - it requires one more step than using any other ATM - the first screen asks what you want to do, you touch atm, then it's exactly the same as any other ATM.
And if $1.75 is too steep, then I need to move to Florida. I don't recall seeing anything below $1.50 lately at any ATM other than my bank.
On
enter a Social Security number on a touch screen.
A masked thief enters a convenience store. The cashier tells him to take whatever he wants, but is surprised when he opens the ATM, removes a hard disk drive, and runs up to the cashier. He shouts, "I own you!"
The cashier says, "No! I meant that you could take anything but me!"
Do you like German cars?
I don't see how they can be considered "super-ATMs". I'm from Portugal, which isn't a tech superpower, and in here the regular ATMs offer that kind of service since the early 90s.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
it served up a whiskey sour. (I cash my paycheck at the bar.)
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
Can they set them up to handle the voting booth tasks? It seems the same companies that make these reliable, traceable units, just can't figure out how to make a voting console properly. Merging the two could solve the USA's current problems with (apparantly) rigged elections.
Oh sure, make us pay for the convenience of you being able to hawk all your wares through one endpoint.
As for this whole ATM idea that becomes a small store. Well, surely paying your bills through it is only for the poor (else you would just let your bank do it for free) who can only pay with cash. 1.75-3 dollars seems like the extra banks charge here if you want to pay a bill cash as the counter instead of through the mail from your account.
As for other services. Yeah great. Internet access through an ATM? Talk about a waste of hardware. You got a small bank vault, a complex teller machine sitting idle while somebody is browing goatse and 20 fuming customers behind him waiting to withdraw cash?
Couple that with the fact that an awfull lot of people are already confused enough by regular cash dispensers and this sounds like a really bad idea.
Then again what do I know. Maybe people said the same things about the original ATM's.
But 3 dollars for paying a bill. Yikes.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
SS Number? I give that to no one unless they are paying into the system for me - ie. my boss. It ticks off a lot of doctors offices when that box is blank but when I ask 'em why they need to know it they just stare at me.
I'd just as soon not have one at all, but I'm sure not pluging it into an ATM.
Do they still use *checks* in the US? I mean, they haven't heard of wire transfers and online banking? Seriuosly, how do people receive their wages or pay their rent there? By CHECKS?
ATMS have always cashed checks. You deposit the check, then you take the money back out of your account. How is this any different?
I live in south Florida (Fort Lauderdale), where there is a 7/11 on every corner, and a VCom inside every single one of them. There is someone using the machine pretty much every time I walk into any of the neighborhood 7/11's (daily). Seems the white-collar's withdraw cash, and the blue-collar's cash checks. I can't say as I have seen anyone pay their bills or whatnot with one, however.
Here in Ontario (perhaps in the rest of Canada? I'm new here) there are electronic kiosks where you can do such things as renew your license or registration, change your address, etc... I'm sure there are people afraid to use it, but it's great for those of us who are not technophobic.
I have memories of the DMV in California and spending half-a-day hopping from line-to-line to get simple tasks taken care of. I'll use the kiosk whenever I can!
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss
Possibly the best single feature they rolled out was to make available ATM payments to just about any company wiling to sign up. The first adopters were the utilities companies, that because of this now have less offices and "point of sale" than needed 20 years ago. Today any company can become a client of SIBS and get a 5-number code to be its ID. This ID will be printed on invoices along with another number, which identifies the transaction. Anyone can use an ATM to pay the invoice. Just type in these 2 codes, the amount to be transfered and you're done. The receipt will be printed out and for some services (ie: mobile phone top-ups) you get to see the effect within a couple of seconds.
Building on this basic operation, many companies hired the services of SIBS to add their own menus and sub-menus on the ATMs, so these days there is a quite a lot of stuff you can do:
- buy concert tickets
- buy train tickets
- make bank transfers
- allow/change permissions for automatic payments from your account (ie: allow the water bill to be paid without confirmation)
- top up mobile phones
- pay public transport monthly tickets . this one had some extra work: the public transport tickets have to get in the ATM so their chip gets read/written. They're similar to London's Oyster cards
and so on. overall it's pretty cool and has been working for a while now, that's why I'm surprised that adding bank transfers to ATM operations (in the US?) makes the news on"I also happen to think that charging people to get access to their own money is a bit rich"
No. You get charged for going outside your network. My bank doesn't charge me for using their ATM's. The main reason I don't use them more often is that the minimumn you can take out is a bit big $20. The other is that all the other services I use are online.
Mind you, that would be the only thing banks provide free these days.
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
$1.75 is not terribly bad, in Chicago you can't find a single ATM for less than $2.00.
Having RTFA I don't see mention on the main reason for inputting a SSN. Last I checked, The SSN is NOT VALID to be used as a form of identification (even though we all know we're branded and identified by this number by our government overlords.) When are we going to finally stand up to these invasive bastards?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
In canada, when you use your banks atm machines, you can cash cheques, pay bills, do almost anything you can do at a teller. The only reason I even go to the teller anymore is to get coins. There's still the need for money orders, and other things that only tellers can do, but those reasons are getting fewer and fewer. I'm not sure if it's good or bad. It's a lot more convenient to be able to get go up to a machine 24 hours a day and do your banking. but then again it's lost jobs for those people working as tellers.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
...SpectralDesign learned that these electronic kiosks were not officially sanctioned machines of convenience, rather an elaborate scheme setup by hackers to harvest personal information, specifically, from Canadian newcomers.
He vowed to never use a computer again.
All that superduper stuff and I bet they still eat your card.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Whats with everything on /. being tagged gay ? Someone needing to vent their sexual frustrations or something?!
R.
VCom machines make a fortune from people who normally do not hold bank accounts. The check cashing is ideal for people who work the swing shift and miss most of the check cashing joints an liquor stores.
.. as the game show used to say .. 'SURVEY SAYS' -> once again, nothing useful because the people surveying are just too dense to realize exactly who these things were designed to serve.
:)
Many people who don't have a bank account also pay their bills via western union, either a moneygram or purchasing money orders to mail off to someone , or drop in the rent box on the way home.
These people really don't give a rat's ass who gets their social security number, they hope whoever steals it manages to pay off their bills and fix their credit score.
They also don't care about the $1.75 fee, as most people who appreciate the machines don't in fact use the ATM feature.
Vcom cornered a market nobody else has been able to touch. There's a 7-11 in every blue collar neighborhood in most first , and third world countries and those things are popping up globally.
So
Rather swift marketing imho
Every time I go to my bank's ATM I withdraw $300. To do this, they make me hit "withdraw money", then hit "from checking", then present me with several pre-selected amount buttons all below $200 which makes me hit "other amount", then I hit 3-0-0-0-0-ENTER, then I hit "confirm with receipt". Message to the bank: how about if you customize my options so that one of the first buttons I have the option of hitting reads "withdraw $300 like you have every time you've been here in the past ten years". I'd really like to hit just one button instead of ten. Doesn't seem like rocket science.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
....according to Diebold, maker of millions of ATM's and some very bad voting machines, it isn't possible for them to create a voting machine which prints a receipt.
Logic says then, that if these machines can print receipts, they cannot be voting machines. QED.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
One of our largest banks is the "State Employees' Credit Union"... they have ATMs everywhere, no surcharge.
It's excellent (and it's a good bank, too!)
Jay | http://oldos.org
Now I need to do everything on my own plus I am to a large degree responsible for a lot of security issues that simply would not exist if I could deal with a real person that would know me personally in no time.
Some time ago I pondered wether it would be an improvement in this direction if one seperated the front end business from the back end. I.e. Have several companies that are solely responsibel for the customer interaction for all banks and let the actual banks only offer their products (accounts, fonts, etc.)
That way this front end companies had an interest in providing a good customer experience and the actual banks had to make good offer too, because knowledgeable people at the front end would be the one that choose what is appropriate.
just my 2 euro cent
Is this really necessary? I hope I'm not sounding like an old timer, but do we really need these fancy new ATMs?
The more LOCs and functionality one of these has, the more potential for security holes. I'd go out of my way to avoid one of these.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Perhaps if you make getting cash just too hard for the average joe, you can wean the public off of those little anonymous bills.
Once you do, you can more easily track the money flow, to catch those pesky terrorists.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The whole thing is further complicated by my inability to find a 7-11 in Minneapolis or St. Paul... I was curious if it poops out a cellphone if you sign up for Verizon?
If it can't be done wrong... it can't be done.
So .. as the game show used to say .. 'SURVEY SAYS' -> once again, nothing useful because the people surveying are just too dense to realize exactly who these things were designed to serve.
Well, this is exactly the sort of technology that should be designed—ideally—to serve every consumer. Another slashdotter compared ATM technology with McDonalds restaurants. That's an apt comparison on multiple levels, since McDonalds kitchens are designed toward the ultimate goal of intuitive, self-explanatory technology with no learning curve whatsoever. For an closer analog (i.e., a computerized kiosk that really does aspire to this level of lowest-common-denominator appeal and user-friendliness), study modern video poker and video slot machines.
As for the informal survey results, this is what one gets when a survey yields quasi-useful responses from one person; with all due respect to Peggy Baker, we need just a few more views before we go publishing "survey" results. Actually, the article also mentions another (tiny) survey of Australian Vcom ATM users that yielded some insights representing a viewpoint diametrically opposed to the one represented by Ms. Baker. Not surprisingly, it seems as though the article's author wants to make this seem like a case in which users are polarly divided.
I'm with the Europe folks on this one - This is really only news for Americans. Here in Japan, ATMs have had this sort of functionality via the Postal Savings system for years. That, and most ATMs at convenient stores can be used to pay utilities, purchase tickets, and a hoard of other services. Maybe US banks just don't feel any pressure to innovate. Hell, in comparison to the rest of the world in terms of a user experience it's not even innovation - it's catch-up.
And of course all this "convienence" makes it easier to reduce "privacy"
I suggest reading "Database Nation by Simson Garfinkel".
I havent used an ATM in 20 years. They can overengineer it and have it ask for SSN's all they want. I don't care.
Does this mean ATM's will spit out more denominations than just $20? If I get a check for $36.41 it would have to give me one of every denomination of currency.
Or maybe it will give me a $20 bill and $16.41 in pennies?
This is your choice, afaik you still have the option of walking into the bank (subsidized by people who use ATM's). Non personal banking has freed up people to work in other areas of the economy such as IT etc. while making banking convenient for most people. If you need hand holding every time as to which decision to make (do I withdraw money, or do i deposit it?), you can still talk to a banking professional, this option still exists. But I know I rather have blockbuster drugs and cheap communications and better cars/computers over this supposed nostalgic banking experience thing. I never remember not having to stand in line at the bank. Was there ever such a time? I have better things to do with my time. Surely there are alternate places to get social interaction than standing in line in the bank?
... which require users to enroll and enter a Social Security number on a touch screen."
... an ATM is simply not the place to be signing up for services.
Asking people to enter sensitive information on a touch screen in a completely insecure environment? It's one thing to go to your local bank branch and sign up for an ATM service, it's an entirely diffent matter to do it while standing in a 7-11. customers complained about the machine's usability, but I don't care if the thing is running Mac OSX
If any system seemed designed to fail this is it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I work in the credit/debit industry, and have had the misfortune of dealing with Vcom customer service. They could be used as a case study on why outsourcing phone support to India doesn't work. The customer service reps themselves are perfectly nice and intelligent people, but they've obviously had shit for training.
I've had them call me (I deal peripherally with the company that operates Vcom, but know next to nothing about the product itself) to ask shockingly basic questions, and in some cases have had them blind-transfer customers to me when they started getting irate.
I'm in no position to speak to the merits of the actual Vcom machines, but the phone support for it is a joke.
Here in Canada, we don't have machines like those, but I'm not sure if I'd even use them. We just have simple ATMs that accept cheques, bill payments, and dispense cash for free (well at least my bank).
But the only thing I actually use them for is dispensing money once in a blue moon because everyone here accepts debit or credit cards. And maybe sometimes cashing in a goverment tax refund cheque.
As far as bill go, we can pay them all online for free with my bank.
Hey, Indian banks have been offering these features for a few years now. I have been using these services for ~ 7 years (ever since I got an ATM card).
And the menus are not confusing, they are actually laid out pretty well. (One additional option - other services, then just go down one or two levels more to get to the precise service you want). Cash withdrawal and cheque deposits are totally different services and have different buttons.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
They are very SLOW. I have no idea how they make money.
If only - we're in the $2.50-$2.75 range for fees here in the Balt/DC area. A $3 fee is pretty much the point at which cost outweighs convenience and I startchanging my banking habits. All the features in the world isn't going make me more inclined to use more sophisticaed ATMs.
Ah yes. The little old ladies who after twenty years of using them has yet to master entering amount and punching yes now have to figure out how to send their grand kid $20 for his/her birthday. I can't wait. Just got to decide how best to clock them? A watch, hourglass, sundial or calendar? Choices do not equal convience they tend to make things inconvient. Fast food used to be all but seconds for your order now it can be as much as fifteen minutes or more. Sit down restaurants are sometimes faster. We need better services not more services crammed into one place. People asked for better cell phone service so the companies said oh you want games. The people of coarse said no we meant clearer calls and to get a signal in more places. So they give us camera phones to solve the problem. Corporate america doesn't get it and they never will. Availibility of most things has gone up but quality and service have consistently gone down.
With real estate going up so much every month, my bank decided to bypass mortgage brokers and give out instant mortgages via ATMs.
When you key your pin in, your now see the third line "MORTGAGE ACCOUNT" below "CHECKING ACCOUNT" and "SAVINGS ACCOUNT". When you select MORTGAGE ACCOUNT, you can ask for an instant appraisal (linked to Zillow.com) and the day's mortgage rates. If you like what you see, then you can apply for an instant cash out mortgage and it appears in your account. Then you can do waht you want with the new cash.
This new feature was activated April 1, 2006 according to the disclosure.
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You go up to the ATM. You hit start > All programs > Money. You click on withdrawal, but a message box pops up saying that "The disk is not ready" and you must either click Cancel, Retry, or Continue. You then find out that your ATM card wasn't all the way in. You click on retry. You type the amount of cash you want, but numbers don't show up. My bad! Num lock was off. As soon as you click on "Done," a balloon shows up at the bottom of the screen: "This ATM is running low on cash. Click here for more information." That's when you think it's too much, and you go home hungry.
The new machine doesn't belong in front of a seven eleven, it belongs in front of one of those ritzy beverly hills grocery stores, right next to a less sophisticated machine.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
All under OS/2?!
Other countries have had the One Big ATM for some time, but the US has so many competing companies in the same fields that folding all this stuff into one unit hasn't happened. That's also why stored-value cards never really caught on in the USA - there are hundreds of different ones, all with limited utility. That's capitalism.
Then there's a security issue. Especially in the gambling industry, where companies are routinely, by contract, held financially responsible for their errors.
From the article:
"I use it all the time to pay my bills; it's pretty good," said Daisy Borges, who works in the linens department of a home accessories shop near the Cingular store and who dropped in to pay her $39.99 monthly Cingular phone bill during a lunch break.
Borges said she used to mail a check to pay the bill, but switched to using the kiosk three months ago. "It goes faster, it works better," she said. "I'm pretty sure that my money goes to the right people."
And the $2 fee? Borges shrugged and said, "Nothing is free in New York."
So she'd rather pay a $2 fee than spend 2 minutes writing a check and 39 cents on a stamp to just mail it? This is idiocy. Wake up, you moron, you are paying a fee for the "privilege" of paying a bill! And people wonder why they're broke all the time?
I refuse to do pretty much anything that results in additional "because we can" fees being tacked on. I don't even go to concerts that much anymore, since TicketBastard started charging "convenience" fees on tickets even when you go to the venue box office. Someone please tell me, what's so convenient about having to get up early on a Saturday, drive to a concert venue and stand in line with a bunch of hung-over and/or still-drunk-from-last-night malcontents who happen to like the same band that I do?
My ex girlfriend used to use the Vcom all the time, and she was almost entirely technologically illiterate. After she used it the first time she said that it was "fun", and that she "felt like someone from the future".
If she can use one, almost anyone should be able to use one. She'd go cash her payroll checks, which she would get on Saturday night after 6pm. If the check was ever less than $300 there was no fee. Plus there was the added benefit of the Slurpee that she would get me before she left the store.
I thought that there was no way the machine would pay for itself, but she insisted that there were lines at times.
I think that the idea is a good one, I think that people will use it, and I think that we will see machines such as this for a long time to come.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
"... the new ATMs can fulfull the roles of PayPal (by sending money to people), bank (by cashing checks on the spot)..." :P
Is monopoly money that much of a problem over there ?
I think the vCom machines in the 7-11s are great for getting money orders at crazy hours. I've used the vCom down the street quite a few times just for the money order feature and its not confusing at all unless you don't know english. Also, I didn't have to sign up to get a money order. One of the cool features about getting a money order was you can put somewhere around 20 bills in at once and it sorts and counts them all out for you. Its great if they're coming out with something better but the current ones aren't THAT bad...
There is a local company which manufactures multifunctional ATMs for all those purposes, some of them even have a full keyboard (I have used one once to set my internet password).
Of course all that is just a matter of savings to the banks, since an ATM is much cheaper than an employee.
I would assume it's for an overall consistent 'banking experience'. It is possible to deposit decimal amounts, in which case you need the extra digits. Though annoying for withdrawals, the lack of consistency would like be a source of some error. (though not much... it would be possible to automatically adjust for extra digits entered in the withsrawal mode: somebody entering 2-0-0-0 would get $20, just like somebody entering 2-0, as neither $2000 nor $0.20 are acceptable choises for a withdrawal.)
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Here in brazil, ALL ATMs allow you to do this stuff: pay bills, transfer money to accounts (at the same or other banks), deposits, buy credits for cell phone, print your transactions... We do not mail checks with bills on an envelope to pay them: in fact, the brazilian legislation does not allow you to mail money.
:)
Besides doing that on the ATM, on most banks you can do this using internet or cell phone (WAP) -- except the physical-money-handling part, of course!
In most banks, the use of such services is included in the monthly fee you pay to keep your account. In my case, around US$3.00/month one one bank and ZERO on the other. The last time I went to my bank was to reset the internet-access password, 6 months ago.
Subway. (Sandwiches)
Noodles & Company (pasta dishes served in 5 minutes - takes longer to eat, though).
Smoothie King. (Fruit, protein powder, ice in a blender.)
Pizza. (12 minutes from order - call ahead and it is instant.)
Yeah, it's pretty funny over here. However, I've never had a problem using a foreign card in Japan, and neither have friends. Go to the Post Office's machines. Japanese banks will only take Japanese cards in general.
What frustrates me are the charges and hours. Yes, hours, and they aren't 24 hours a day. It's more like 08:00 - 20:00. Plus, if you buy airline tickets or other furikomi goods, then you usually get charged around Y500 for the 'service'.
Who's your user, program?
are afoot at the Circle K.
there was an expose on one of the TV news shows a few years back (60 minutes or 20/20, I forget right now). Those private machines-some criminal orgs were buying them up orecisely to get the banking info and to use in money laundering. I haven't used anything but an official bank ATM since. There are allegedly laws that somehow magically only honest people can get them and install them, but apparently they had no problems whatsoever getting one and putting it up as a test, using bogus background details-the company who sold them just accepted it at face value.
Someone here might remember that show so it can be looked at again, I may not have the details completely correct but that was the gist of it.
"no European version of Enron"...royal dutch shell got caught cooking the books in their statements of estimated and proven reserves. Exagerrating by ...20%, one fifth no biggee, just buckets and scads of dollars/euros/clams/lbs whatever else you use worth they lied about. for a long time, too. How did that effect "the markets" and what people pay at the pump? who profited from that little gem? I know it didn't make much of a splash, but as bigtime crimes go as regards "energy", it is right up there. And, speaking of money, I seem to remember a little scandal involving massive drug deals, arms, slaves, political power being bought sold and traded coming from a little bank in italy. Whoops, it appears to also concern some "terrorist" attacks that were done by non muslim right wingers, but pinned on others, what they call "false flags". Oh ya, brit intel working *inside* IRA cells and letting bombings go down..how ..quaint. And the 7-7 attacks, how *conveneient* to be running a "drill" at exactly the same time it went down in the same place. Oh yes, and what was that bit involving high level government people, dungeons, torture and murders of women again? Where was that?
Europe is full of scandals, money, energy, political and otherwise. No one here on this board comes from anyplace that is completely full of smart honest people, so there's no sense in going for the jingoistic nonsense. Humans can suck,they can be crooks, liars,thieves and murderers (hey, who invented "the concentration camp" again?); it is that simple,it doesn't matter where they grew up or what color skin or what funny hats they wear or which side of the road they drive on or whether they are universally dumbed down and faked out by the central banking thieves making them use cash, cheques, or cards..we are all guilty of being conned there...
The US has some suckiness to it with scandals, but they learned it from the Europeans.
The St George Bank (also BankSA) in Australia offer this feature, and its easy to use.. Simply type in your pin and hit the favourite withdrawl button. The atm then returns the previously saved amount of money, and a receipt (if set). It really speeds up your atm transactions.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
Over the last ten years or so most of the banks in the UK have upgraded their ATMs, replacing the old green-screened units with new, colour-screen equipped ones. Functionality is in the most part unchanged aside from a few minor features (such as the ability to top up pre-paid mobile phone accounts), and the heavier use of the machines to display advertisments.
What has changed, however, is that the machines operate slower than the old ones - a good few seconds on every transaction which results in longer queues.
Is this progress?
Goddamit, I don't WANT an ATM to do anything except spit cash! I already wait too long in grocery market lines while people buy stamps, pay their fucking bills, and everything else except buy groceries and get the fuck outta my way!
Adding more functions to an ATM? Good lord right now I spend 15 minutes in line watching people ram their card into the machine 6 times, looks perplexed at the options, jab their fingers on the buttons several times, then put their card back in and start over. Most people are too dumb to handle 'withdraw' 'deposit' 'transfer', I sure as hell don't want to see more choices on the screen!
There's a 7-11 in every blue collar neighborhood in most first , and third world countries and those things are popping up globally.
I can't remember the last time I saw a 7-11. Wawa kicks their ass here. 7-11 cannot compete with them.
Since the rise of debit cards, I don't use cash to buy anything anymore (hence, never get any change). And ATM's only offer $10 bills and higher. Therefore, to get $1's and quarters I actually haver to go to the bank and get them in bulk (and deal with hateful looks from the tellers when I ask for $60 in quarters and $50 in $1's).
And don't even get me started on pennies. I won't even accept those in change, and just throw the damn things in the trash when I do get them.
How about a truly *SUPER* ATM that can give me some damn change?
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It is about the one at 7-11...I was scared someone had installed a BIGGER one somewhere,hehe.
The monster is slower to get money out of by a tad than the old one last year. By a whole lot tho if some fool in front of you is cashing a check or something odd.
They should put up a lot of these super duper ATMs then. Those of us who have been #2 in the queue and looked forward to a quick withdrawal of cash, only to listen to lots of beeps and reinsertions of the card by the person in front of you, acting like he or she never have used one of these machines before, pressing all the wrong buttons, incredibly enough going on for a long period without getting the card confiscated by the machine due to too many incorrect PIN code entries, KNOW what I mean: Hopefully, the banks only hand out cards for these new ATMs to persons passing some kind of an IQ-test, or users who already have an internet-enabled bank account. Or hopefully they will roll out really many of these machines, to avoid long and irritating queues because ordinary 'non computer' people simply get too many options to choose between on the spot.
In this "third world" country where I live, our ATMs offer users the following abilities: Withdraw money (from any linked account) Pay bills Transfer cash Deposit Cash Pay Speeding fines Buy Cellphone Airtime (from any of our Cellular Service Providers) Get bank statements Draw cheques (American: checks) Open new accounts Request replacement cards/chequebooks (American: checkbooks)
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