Many of you might have heard that Bank Of America converted over their ATMs here in Florida to the new image deposit type, where you don't use envelopes, you just feed in the check, and it scans and reads the amount properly, and prints the image on your receipt as proof positive of the deposit.

I have received 3 standard U.S. Post Office Money Orders in the last week and none of them will scan into the Bank Of America ATM.s at 3 different branches, but other checks have successfully gone into my account.

When I go to make my deposit, the ATM feeds in the U.S.P.S. money order, but spits it back out seconds later with a cryptic message, "unable to process check". It works for all other checks I have deposited, but not the U.S. Post Office Money Orders. These are machine printed, so why can't BOFA’s ATMs read them?

I'm tired of wasting time in line inside the bank to deposit a $20 money order when the ATM is supposed to be saving my time, not wasting it! We want the envelopes back!

Anyone got any clues on this? The bank personnel had no clue, but the reported someone else complained about it.

Jeff

I have been working with image capture since the late 90's. There is an ongoing issue with money orders, not just USPS money orders, since many are printed in 7-eleven's, etc that are not necessarily careful in maintaining their machines. B of A is like all banks and puts the 80-20 rule in effect. They are able to capture over 80% of the deposited items and the other 20% may come over time. Something you will have to deal with until the industry is able to capture them all.

Well, I'm looking at the 2 money orders I have right now from
USPS, printed by the post office, and they maintain their machines, the printing is crystal clear, could not possibly be misread as far as I’m concerned.

I have already started to change all my eBay auctions to forbid money order payment and just use Papal, as I like to bank in the 21st century.

I'm wondering if the security features of the money orders might be contributing to the failure of BOFA’s ATMS from reading them in. I have seen recently for example, if you try to photocopy your automobile title for Florida, the words "void" or something like that appear on the photocopy, but not on the original title, as a security measure to prevent people from duplicating a title illegally. Very clever trick actually.

I'm wondering if for example, the Ben Franklin watermark on the U.S.P.S. money order might be tripping up the image recognition software.

Also, you would think that the USPS money orders would have been the first test item that BOFAs engineers tested to make sure thier image deposit ATM technology works. Duh! What were they thinking? No one ever consults with me whent hey design and test something. I can break anyone's product, do it all the time, our nation suffers from poor engineering.

This whole image check deposit thing is going to back fire on them, because it will cause customers to switch banks away from BOFA as a Sun-Sentinel article 2 weeks ago pointed out. This new image deposit technology is not as rosey as they make it seem.

One other bad artifact: If you deposit multiple checks in one sitting, it treats it as one large deposit on your account, and it won’t reconcile with your Quicken software who is expecting to see multiple checks. So we can see this whole system was designed by people who don't actually have to use it.

At least when we had envelopes, 100% of my checks got accepted as seperate without issue in the ATM.

If image capture doesn't work, there always is the night depository. Unfortunately BofA doesn't participate in the Shared Deposits program (at least not here in Illinois) so you couldn't travel to a different ATM either.

If image capture doesn't work, there always is the night depository. Unfortunately BofA doesn't participate in the Shared Deposits program (at least not here in Illinois) so you couldn't travel to a different ATM either.

Strange thing, our image capture ATM works with money orders. I don't, however, know what our reject rate is.

Well, I forgot to mention, I was able to deposit 2 Moneygram money orders from Walmart a few weeks ago, which someone sent me. They deposited with no problems.

It's the United States Post Office money orders that have all the problem. Doesn't surprise me, I've been growing increasingly disenchanted with the U.S.P.S. due to rapidly rising postage rates, while their quality of service has dropped. You can't even by media mail or 1st class postage on their site.

A Bit off topic here, but anyone who has ever tried to track their shipment USPS web site online will find it's a joke. Their site does not even show your item until the evening AFTER it has been delivered. So your customers accuse you of giving them a false tracking number that shows up as “not in system” until after delivery. One more reason to use another service.

What is wrong with technology people? It’s supposed to make our lives easier, not take time away from our lives debugging someone else’s poor engineering.

Jeff - first, BofA doesn't consult "customers" when designing products, so don't feel put out that you weren't consulted. 2nd, in an image environment, all money orders, not just USPS, are hard to capture. Some of it has to do with the pixel imprinting of numbers, some to do with raised text (punch-outs), some with other issues I'm not willing to post on an open forum. If you are not happy with the service you receive from BofA, you are free to move your accounts anywhere you would like. However, don't assume that they will be able to solve your image issue.

Several posters mentioned the night depository, and that is an option. So is depositing by mail. Yes, both of these are a tad slower than ATM deposit. Possibly a discussion with BofA about your deposit options for PMOs could be held.

As with any new technology, there are always issues that need to be worked out (remember early versions of Windows?). To expect perfection is nice, but not realistic.

Jeff, perhaps just shift over a lane to the left and use the drive-thru?

Oi, the drive thru lane, which I affectionately call the drivee me crazy lane. I avoid it whenever possible, the lobby lines seem to move quicker. In the drive through lanes, I always get stuck ehind someone who does not have their act together, or it's 2 tellers running 3 or 4 lanes at once.

Paypal, take me away!