Good Morning - I have a question in regards to an ATM transaction that my eBranch is questioning me on. We had a customer call in about an ATM withdraw that was made with her debit card by her daughter. She stated that her daughter and sister were in Chicago and that she had given them her debit card and authorized them to make the withdraw. However, she asked about the location of the withdraw because her daughter had been told to stay out of a certain area of Chicago. This withdraw was done in the area she was not supposed to be in. The mother asked for the card to be restricted at that time. The next day the mother called back in and asked for the card to be unrestricted. She did state that her daughter and sister did not receive the funds from the ATM withdraw the previous day - according to them the money did not dispense. We gave the customer a provisional credit within a 10 day period and sent a request to the bank in Chicago for a refund of the funds. However, this bank responded back to us stating their ATM had balanced that day and there would be no refund. They believed the customer had received the funds. We then debited the customers account and removed the original provisional credit. I guess my eBranch employees question to me is: Is this considered a Reg E error/dispute? He is worried that it might come back to bite us because we didn't handle it as such.

Anybody have any suggestions on how this should have been handled or was it handled properly? Should we have left the provisional credit in her account and taken the 45 days allowed by Reg E to perform more research? Curious on others thoughts.

Thanks

Yes, it was a Reg E error claim (failure to dispense). The claim has to be made with the card-issuing bank, as your customer did. After going to the source (the bank owning the ATM) you had enough information, IMHO, to reach a conclusion that the ATM withdrawal was completed and the funds dispensed. So you were correct in denying the claim promptly (you don't get to play the investigation out to the full 45 days unless you have to in order to complete the investigation). What you didn't do (unless you forgot to mention it) is provide the cardholder a notice that you denied the claim and indicating that you would honor certain items without charge even if they overdraw her account for five days, etc.

Thanks John! I appreciate the information.

The mother asked for the card to be restricted at that time.

The mother would not have asked me to do that as I would have immediately cancelled the card when she told me she gave it to someone else.