By PYMNTS | May 20, 2016
TD Bank is saying ciao to the good, old penny-counting machines that have adorned its branches for several years now.
The bank’s decision comes after a NBC investigation found that the penny counters were miscalculating the spare change and cheating kids out of their piggy bank savings.
The investigation checked the accuracy of the “Penny Arcade” machines by feeding it $300 worth of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. When the machine finished counting, it came up short by 15 percent and gave out a receipt of $256.90. In another test, it came short by $3.73 and by less than $1 at three other locations. None of the test results were ever in favor of customers, according to Time.
While the NBC investigation led the bank to temporarily shut down its penny-counting service for maintenance in April this year, it announced that it was completely shutting down the service after the bankwas reportedly sued by New York customer Jeffrey Feinman,who says he was cheated twice by the machine, in a class-action lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“We have determined that it is difficult to ensure a consistently great experience for our customers,” said TD Executive Vice President Michael Rhodes. “In addition, the usages of our coin-counting machines has declined steadily over the past few years. For these reasons, we have decided to retire the fleet and provide alternative coin-counting solutions.”
TD, which is among the 10 largest banks in the U.S. with 8 million+ customers, had earlier promised to bring the service back to life but then decided against it after auditing 1,000 machines spread all across the East Coast.
Going forward, the bank said it will continue to accept pre-rolled coins for deposit from businesses and nonprofit customers without an additional charge and would also provide them with free coin wrappers.
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