Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 19, 1994 TAG: 9402190042
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
That's exactly what happened to tens of thousands of Chemical Bank customers using cash machines earlier this week.
"I always wondered about this sort of thing happening," said Stephanie Twinn as she left a Chemical branch Friday. "Everyone relies on these so much."
A malfunctioning computer software program doubled all withdrawals and transfers made at Chemical Bank automatic teller machines in New York state for about 12 hours starting Tuesday night.
Chemical examined the system after customers began to complain, and all errors were corrected, said bank spokesman Ken Herz. The bank promised to pay all fees for checks bounced as a result of the glitch and to write letters for anyone whose credit rating was hurt.
"This was completely our fault, and we take full responsibility for it," Herz said.
ATMs have been available since the early 1970s but came into widespread use in the early 1980s. There are now more than 85,000 ATMs in the United States, with about 8 billion transactions yearly, said Speer & Associates, an Atlanta financial consulting firm.
Banking and consumer experts agreed that the type of problem experienced by Chemical is rare.
"This is a fluke," said Dave Lott, a Speer vice president. "That's not to say it hasn't happened before and won't happen again. But this is an isolated situation. The error rate for ATMs is really very low."
The printed record of transactions spit out by the machine was accurate, but the computerized posting of withdrawals and transfers was automatically doubled.
Only those people who checked their balance - and knew what it should have been - would have realized there was a problem.
by CNB