Liar, Liar…Ok, you have no pants, but your tongue…no, wait…
I really mean lied, as in “deliberately communicated a falsehood in order to deceive.” There’s no excuse for it.This morning I had the pleasure of depositing a rather large check in my account, exactly the way I have been depositing smaller checks on a regular basis at the same ATM at the same branch office of the various iterations of what is now Wells Fargo. This was an institutional check, from another financial institution, so it was printed, boldly, and the amount was not scrawled, as with many personal checks I have occasion to deposit using the “no envelope” method we now have avaliable thanks to the wonders of modern technology.
Nonetheless, the machine this morning had the cheek to post a window and message I had never seen before, telling me that the machine “could not read the check amount” and asking me to enter it on the keypad, rather than just confirm the deposit.
What’s going on here?
Wells Fargo is lying, that’s what. The amount on the check, which I usually can barely make out from the small scanned image on the screen, was so dark and clear that I could read it easily from three feet away. If I could read it, the machine that made the image definitely could read it. No, this was a new security feature, like the time over Christmas that holds were placed on four of my credit cards while I was standing at a check-out register because my Christmas shopping bill was “unusual” according to some geniuses’ software programs. What that false message from the ATM really meant was, “Hold it there, a minute, buster. You don’t get checks this big; we think you’re a crook. So we’re going to rattle you with this pointless, annoying request, even though a crook is just as capable of entering the amount as a legitimate depositor.”
I entered the amount and the deposit went through, but I don’t appreciate being lied to, even by inanimate objects. “We can’t read the amount” is utter bullshit; “For security purposes, please enter the amount of the check using the keypad” would have been accurate and inoffensive. Some consultant must have told Wells Fargo that customers prefer to be told that something requiring extra steps is the machine’s fault. Some consultant should be defenestrated.
You know, Wells Fargo, banks’ credibility is not exactly at an all-time high. Now I know that you will lie to me, indeed program a machine to lie to me, in the trivial matter of depositing a check. What else will you lie to me about, especially when it benefits you?
This doesn’t even get to the fact that your lie was transparent, and presumed that I am a moron.
I don’t trust you.
Ethics Alarms 
Chase atms ALWAYS say they can’t read the amount, even on checks from a municipality. And let’s not even discuss trying to use credit cards or ATM cards outside the US, even when you have let the credit card companies and banks know that you will be travelling.
Oh, yes. My recent trip to an international book fair is a perfect example. Call the credit card company and explain that I will be in city A and will be buying books from multiple vendors. Because of the exchange rate being favorable to us the amounts will be small, and several purchases will be made in the same day. I won’t have cell phone access. “Oh, we’re sorry. Yes, you did tell us that. We tried to call your office, but you weren’t in. They told us that you were in city A, so we froze the card for your safety.”
One of my favorite lies, he said, teeth clenched. “We tried to call/e-mail/mail you.” What was it that stopped you, exactly????
Maybe the ATM was just having a long day.
Maybe the previous two or three customers just got done abusing and swearing at the ATM and it was flustered.
Where’s your compassion?
ATM’s don’t get paid enough for his kind of abuse.
You are really entering Andy Roony territory with this post. (shakes fist at cloud.)
You must not have followed Andy very closely. He was always talking about irritations and annoyances. Banks causally using lies in the course of business is, in contrast, a lot more than an annoyance and something that requires a no tolerance attitude, just as lies from politicians and elected officials require similar standards.
I realize that as a progressive, you are increasingly being corrupted to believe that lies don’t matter in the big picture and grand scheme of things. You’re smart–you should be able to see the slippery slope you’re on, and GET OFF IT> But a theme here, even going back to the old Ethics Scoreboard, is that obvious, trivial lies that the liar doesn’t even expect you to believe are the most sinister of all. they show disrespect, but most of all, a proclivity and casualness about using dishonesty as the easy solution to problems.
You also called me an old man, which I am not, at least by Satchel Paige’s definition. Name whatever stereotype you wish, I guarantee that I don’t fit it. Still an ad hominem attack, and evidence of bigotry. Exactly the same as “typical of you jungle bunnies,’ but more socially acceptable in politically correct circles. You should think about that.
I couldn’t stand Andy Rooney.
Upon further reflection, I realize that I am perhaps ruining a perfectly good humblebrag of yours. Depositing big checks is good! Yay! lol
Andy Rooney was young once Jack. If someone compared you to Harrison Ford, would you think older Harrison Ford (he’s about your age) or young, dashing Indiana Jones Harrison Ford? (The last Indiana Jones movie doesn’t exist for me, so Indiana Jones always will be young in my book.)
P.S. My dad used to shake his golf club at the neighborhood kids in his thirties — he just continued the habit into his sixties.
Harrison Ford is almost 73, and I don’t think Jack is quite that old. I hope when Jack is over 70 he’s hitting a little white ball somewhere and not concerned with much more. I’m not yet 50 and I’ve yelled at local kids to get off my lawn, and told a high school kid who apparently didn’t know better “Hey Herbie, lose the derby,” for wearing a hat in church while prepping for a joint concert between a HS choir and our community chorus. The locals booked, they could just go in someone else’s yard, the hat kid tried to assert himself “My name is Ron” and was quickly asked “What, have we got a wise guy here? Take off your hat or leave this house of worship, kid.”
Harrison Ford, by his own accounts, has been an old curmudgeon since at least his 20’s.
(Harrison’s older than I am. Looks it, too)
Unfortunately he is and does. He looks like he has aged 20 years in the last 7. I could buy Indiana Jones still doing his thing in 2008, but Han Solo in his last appearance looked like he should have long ago bought a villa on Naboo and retired.
Speaking only for myself, I think Harrison Ford still is very attractive.
Harrison’s great, and he’s also not vain, which is impressive in his field.
Defenestration is an option of the past. All windows in office buildings over two stories high are sealed shut nowadays … so you can die quietly at your desk when the gas comes through the air vents.
Easy there, Jacko. You’re reminding me of Woody Allen who said “I only get mad at machines.” Or my friend the librarian who would kick computers when they didn’t work so when the techs called to make a repair remotely their first question was always, “Did you kick the computer, Paula?”
One of my friends that works at a bank (not Wells Fargo) informs me that the most people like to walk the big checks into the bank to deposit them personally. But the ATM readers routinely read regular checks as “big checks”, probably due to a missed decimal point. That causes a real headache for them when it comes time to reconcile the deposits. So now they have the ATM programmed to be unable to read anything over a certain amount, it has to be put in manually. That is probably the case here too. So cheer up, the machine probably didn’t lie to you, it actually is unable to read anything over a certain amount due to it’s programming. (retracts fist).
Riiiight. That makes a lot of sense. ot can read the decimal point in smaller checks, but not larger ones? Do you really believe that? In four figures, but not five? In five figures that begin with a one, but not that begin with a higher numeral?
Boy, are you gullible.
Or you work for Wells Fargo.
No, can’t read the decimal point routinely. For example, deposit a check for $456.321, but the ATM would read it as $456,321. I’m sure some number crunchers sat down and realized that they didn’t get that many checks for such large amounts deposited in the machines, as opposed to the machine misreading small checks for big ones. So they simply programmed the machines not to read such big amounts, they would have to be entered manually. So yes, the machine literally could not read the check, it was restricted by its programming from doing so.
There was no comma, presumably for this reason. Just a decimal. XXXXX.00. There was nothing to misread. A check for “$456.321” is obviously a mistake, and shouldn’t be accepted.
You are talking about your specific check. But the chances are that it falls within the “too large, probably a mistake” framework that the programmers set up for the computer to kick out. People deposit all sorts of weird checks for weird amounts, but some will throw up red flags. A prudent bank should instruct their computers not to read certain things, as their automatic reading functions may not work all that well under such circumstances.
It is a split hair to say there is a difference between “”the Machine lied” and “It programmers crippled it to state that something apparently readable is unreadable.”
However, I somewhat concur that machine interpretation of text is very inexact. I think that Jack’s offense at being thought a potential crook is misplaced; the bank does not trust its machine to the read amount, and asks that the machine’s internal count be verified.
On the other hand, sometimes this backfires. I once mistyped $200 as $2000, and it cleared, and fun was had by all….*
*(‘fun’ fixing the error, not living it up on the bank’s 8,000 dimes. I am still a boy scout)
Did everybody think about Brian’s great observation? Here:
Once you typed in the amount of the check the machine continued your transaction correct? If so, it was because what you typed matched what it read.
If the machine literally could not read the check, it would have told you to go inside because there would be no data available to process.
You made it past the read stage and into the edit check logic of the program. If I were programming this I would set a maximum check amount that I would process without further customer input. If the amount is larger, either because the input source misread the amount or because the check was actually above my threshold, I would ask the customer to input the amount, it’s a dual method validation. If the amount read by the machine did not match the amount input by the customer, then you would receive another error message.
Again, given my maximum dollar value to process logic, I would be expecting two scenarios to trip my logic, misread error or high dollar value checks. But before you input the amount of the check, the program doesn’t know which condition applies, and no programmer would presume it was a read error when the whole purpose of the edit check is to determine if it was a read error.
Which disproves deery and all the doubters conclusively! Of course the machine could read the check, and of course the ATM was lying! If it couldn’t read the check, how could it know that what I typed was correct? If I typed twice the real amount, would that money have suddenly been credited to my account? No, of course not—what the amount I typed was. ..because the machine COULD read it.
Obvious, and irrefutable.
To clarify, I also had an institutional check for 200-something, the machine told me that it could not read it, and it accepted my typo of 2000-something. The image was even clear as day in the scanned image, and it was solely my butterfingers responsible for the goof.
In my experience, the character-recognition technology is simply limited, and not as reliable as it might appear. My experience suggests to me that the bank trusted me as a customer to enter the correct amount when the machine’s reader malfunctioned unexpectedly.
It accepted my extra zero, and after three days, the funds were even released into my account. (I did report the mishap immediately, but I think it was a weekend or something, so it was a few days before they opened the machine to manually inspect the check and reverse the credit). Admittedly, this is one anecdote, but I do not believe the machine or its programmers *lied* when it said it could not read the check, nor used such at lie to coax me into typing the amount for some security confirmation.
The machine simply goofed, and the bank trusted me to fix that goof.
Four hundred fifty six dollars and three hundred dollars and twenty-one thousandths of a dollar? Or is that thirty two and one tenth cents? I’ve never seen money written to three decimals before. I’m a chartered accountant. What bank are you with?
But regardless, someone COULD write a cheque in algebra for all we care… it’s irrelevant to this. The point is that there’s a process in place where after a cheque passes a ceratin amount, the ATM has been programmed to lie to Wells Fargo customers and say that it cannot read the cheque, forcing a manual entry.
It’s just that simple.
Ding ding.
If it has been programmed not to read the check, that isn’t a lie. That’s a complaint about the programming, not about its wording when it informs you about its programming parameters.
I’m not telling you you’re a dipshit, I programmed my keyboard to do that. So it’s OK.
Your usual self. I had replied without realizing who I replied to. That was pointless.
You didn’t reply to me, you programmed your keyboard to reply to me, and I know that your keyboard replied to me because you programmed your mouse to click the reply button under my comment. And even if you hadn’t programmed your keyboard and mouse to do those things, the comment they produced was still pretty stupid, so I programmed mine to mock them.
Deery.
Whether or not it was programmed “not” to read the check is immaterial. It is programmed to *inform* the customer that it “could not” read the check.
Though according to its programming it “cannot”, it is meant to replicate a real teller, and is therefore a representation of the bank. It has been programmed to lie and anyone reasonably expects terminology of “cannot read” not mean a built in prohibition on reading but an actual inability.
Of course the machine, an immoral agent, isn’t actually lying. But the programmers have transferred an approved lie from whatever decision makers made the decisions.
This puts it in the category of deceit.
The machine is an amoral agent.
I agree that the machine is an amoral agent. But I think this whole thing starts rapidly devolving into semantics at a certain point. I don’t think there is much material difference between a computer informing someone that because of its programming, it cannot read a check, and telling someone that it cannot read the check. I guess it could tell people that while its scanners have the capability of reading such checks, its coding prevents it from doing so, so they will have to enter the numbers manually, but that is a lot to read while standing out in the cold and trying to deposit a stupid check. “Can’t read, enter manually”, is a good summation of the problem, without being particularly deceitful.
Or maybe it could say something like this:
Did you read the post?
If they both are true, but customers prefer one over the other, what is the deceit exactly? It’s all just how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin after a certain point. It isn’t a lie, just not the way Jack prefers to hear that information conveyed. So it really does become an argument about semantics, which is fine, but not so much about deceit.
Deery,
They are not both true. The ATM can obviously read the check or else it can’t determine the check is bigger than it is permitted to process without further action. Then the ATM turns around and pushes a pre-approved statement that isn’t true, that is to say: deceitful.
You are the one playing semantic games and trying to skew this into a petty gripe. Yet we know, the small pervasive lies are often the worst for society.
I’ll admit Tex, I do consider this to be the height of a frivolous complaint. So much so that I am rather amused. Jack’s post presumes lots of things, one that the ATM was lying when it could not read the check. I have had checks, for rather nominal amounts, be unable to be read in the machine, when just a week earlier, a check, for the same amount, from the same source, could be. Then the very next, it could be read again. I don’t presume evil intentions when incompetence could be easily be the explanation.
After that, if simple machine error wasn’t the case, then it just seems like Jack does not like the phrasing. Maybe the machine isn’t programmed to read (i.e. register the amount) by it’s programming. Perhaps if it scans over a certain amount, it can’t proceed any further. Sort of as f I was looking at Chinese characters. I can “read” it enough to know that it is something I cannot logically make sense of, and I do see the text, but by no means I am actually reading it. *shrugs*.
We don’t know if this is a lie, let alone a pervasive lie. There is simply no way to tell with the information we have at hand, and with various people’s experience with the technology. It’s just a silly little post by someone who was irritated by having to enter his check manually, and seemingly irritated even more by the bland phrasing of the request. Next time, skip all of that and just deposit the check by using the phone.
Gas in my hometown is $1.999 per gallon. 😉
If that ever happened to me, it wouldn’t even be halfway up the long list of unethical and dastardly things I’ve experienced as an 18-year customer of Wells Fargo.
(I have escaped the beast as of last Summer, and joined a nice local credit union. But I kept my Wells Fargo credit card, since they say that closing a long-standing line of credit is a bad thing. I already regret keeping my Wells Fargo credit card. It was completely paid off, then I used it for a $3000 charge at an Indian hospital. Wells Fargo politely helped themselves to an additional $88 fee. To process the foreign transaction, you see. Some things are worth a ding to the credit score.)
Indian, as in a hospital on United States Federal lands held in trust for American Indian tribe??? 😡
More likely as in pull-push.
#22.
It MAY be the case that the font used threw it off. People are vastly better at adapting pattern recognition than humans are. Just as a specific question: did the printed numbers have any kerning or an italic font, such that two different digtts overlapped on a verticle line at all?
Nope. And identical checks from the same source, just smaller amounts, were always “read.” It amuses me that people are determined to find an excuse for the bank. They, like the airlines, have forfeited the right to be given the benefit of the doubt, no?
It’s not so much that as too many negative experiences with the limits of OCR (optical character recognition). As a computer tech, I’m all too familiar with the various awful ways technology can fail unexpectedly, such that I presume a technical glitch over malfeasance.
I wonder why they didn’t just say “The amount our scanner read on your check looks like an anomaly. Would you please confirm the amount?” I doubt that would have bothered you or anyone else much at all.
Perhaps, upon reflection, it was the phrasing, which as I recall, said that the check was “unreadable.”
I guess I haven’t made this sufficiently clear over the past decade, but I view gratuitous, trivial, lazy lies that even the liar knows nobody will believe as a serious, not a trivial, but serious undermining factor in an ethical culture. This is an example. On the old Ethics Scoreboard, I had a regular category devoted to it: http://ethicsscoreboard.com/liars.html
The easy pass people want to give silly lies like these are the aerly signs of corrupted ethics. So what if Hillary wasn’t really under fire? So what If Obama says that the US has more shootings that any other nation? So what if Trump says he “saw” thousands of cheering Muslims when he really heard about a handful? So who cares if the bank says it can’t read what it could read if it wanted to? i do. I don’t like being lied to. Neither should anyone else.
What about “little white lies?”
– “You look great in that outfit.” (actually you don’t, but I don’t want to be exiled to the couch)
-“Oh, we decided that it was better for the carpets and the inside environment that everyone who comes into our house take their shoes off.” (my wife decreed it after she read something on pinterest, and I want to preserve my monthly sex night)
– “I’ll try to make it to your function.” (I’m not leaving the house unless it’s on fire)
-“Something came up unexpectedly.” (Nothing came up, I was never interested in your proposal/invitation/whatever)
– “I’m afraid I have to let it go at that.” (when asked what the something that come up was)
-“If you can’t get it done, then it’s no big deal” (actually it IS a big deal, I’m testing you to see if you prioritize my stuff)
-“Well, that’s one way of looking at it.” (the idiot’s way of looking at it)
-“I’d be glad to lend a hand” and then “Oh, I got busy with something else” (I couldn’t tell you flat out I wasn’t giving up my weekend to clean your attic)
-“Oh, we decided that it was better for the carpets and the inside environment that everyone who comes into our house take their shoes off.” (my wife decreed it after she read something on pinterest, and I want to preserve my monthly sex night)
That actually makes sense… You’re taking your shoes off in my house too. Respect my stuff, jerks. Or am I just weird like Steve’s wife? Who DOESN’T take their shoes off at the door?
Fictional wife, I am a lifelong singleton. But, to answer your question, Americans and Australians. Canadians tend to do it, because Canada is either a frozen tundra or a muddy slushpit most of the year and it’s reached the level of custom.
My default is to not take off my shoes just as I do not demand that visitors remove their shoes. You are a visitor to my house – I want you to be comfortable. I guess I don’t equate the non-removal of shoes with disrespecting my stuff. Take off your shoes, don’t take off your shoes, I don’t care. Full disclosure – I don’t vacuum the floors. Fuller disclosure – my wife does not demand removal of visitors shoes either.
“Canada is either a frozen tundra or a muddy slushpit most of the year”
This is true. The more you know. Even on carpet? Mind. Blown.
I’d rather be lied to then deal with the annoyance of filling out a slip and talking to a human being inside the bank, after waiting in line — and probably on my lunch break since I work during banking hours.
On reflection, I think I am the old, anti-social, curmudgeon.
As a side note, one day I was writing my name on the Walmart credit card check-out screen, but the thing was malfunctioning so you could barely make out the letters. When I told the cashier she informed me that I could scribble any old marks and the machine would accept it. I didn’t know that!
Target told me the same thing.
Aside; I just posted this as a minor ethics observation in a brief span I had to write one. I thought it might provoke some interesting commentary. It did. It also lost me two followers, and I got three e-mails saying that I fritter away both time and credibility with such posts. Obviously, I don’t see it that way
It also inspired over 40 comments from 13 .different commenters, not counting me. Go figure.
Wow. Who bailed?
Oh, I never know. It’s like Facebook unfriending—drives me nuts. I’ve been oscillating between 975 and 979 direct followers now for about 60 days, up and down, back and forth.
“Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way. ~General George Patton
975-979? The page says, “You are following this blog, along with 2,950 other amazing people.”
Wells Fargo programming? Or are direct followers different than amazing ones?
I don’t pay attention to the Comment followers, or count the Twitter followers. They overlap—WordPress is triple-counting in many cases. Nor do I consider Twitter followers—all my Twitter feed does is carry links to EA posts with few exceptions—true regular blog readers, though some are. I have over a thousand of them; I also follow a thousand feeds that I not only never read but don’t want to, in many cases. I can’t control what WordPress thinks, and it is technically correct, but counting apples with oranges. It doesn’t count my Facebook friends, who I also inflict my posts on several times a week, but they comment here more frequently than the Twitter group, of whom there are twice as many. There are also, I know, a fair number of true followers who check the site daily and “lurk” but who haven’t signed up. Most of the sites that I check most frequently for ideas I don’t officially “follow.”
Once you typed in the amount of the check the machine continued your transaction correct? If so, it was because what you typed matched what it read.
If the machine literally could not read the check, it would have told you to go inside because there would be no data available to process.
You made it past the read stage and into the edit check logic of the program. If I were programming this I would set a maximum check amount that I would process without further customer input. If the amount is larger, either because the input source misread the amount or because the check was actually above my threshold, I would ask the customer to input the amount, it’s a dual method validation. If the amount read by the machine did not match the amount input by the customer, then you would receive another error message.
Again, given my maximum dollar value to process logic, I would be expecting two scenarios to trip my logic, misread error or high dollar value checks. But before you input the amount of the check, the program doesn’t know which condition applies, and no programmer would presume it was a read error when the whole purpose of the edit check is to determine if it was a read error.
Excellent!