Hacker News Reader

Comment by koliber | Hacker News Reader

> most people, after they've been grown-ups for a while, figure out that "find the winning lotto ticket on the sidewalk and get rich"

True, but it's not completely bleak either. I once wanted to take out $40 from an ATM, and it gave me $60! I never told anyone and this is the first time I am sharing this. If a time comes to fill out a security clearance application, should this go in there?

Moral of the story: it takes money to make money. :)

View on HN

> True, but it's not completely bleak either. I once wanted to take out $40 from an ATM, and it gave me $60!

One time, I wanted to take $40 out of an ATM, it gave me $80 instead. I checked my Internet banking - they had the ATM withdrawal at the expected location, but only for $40, which is all I’d asked for. Then, a few days later, I got another $40 debit transaction, but of a strange type I’d never seen before - it was labelled something like “MANUAL ADJUSTMENT”. I assume someone at the bank had worked out that the ATM screwed up and manually corrected it.

Many ATM's can actually detect that too much was given and report it as part of their communications protocol, it's called a "mis-dispense". Some used to even be configured to not allow opening the door to get the money on mis-dispense, requiring someone from the bank to come out to clear it. Source: I used to work on the bank software side of this communication, on IBM AS/400's.

Guess: They screwed up in loading or configuring the ATM, so it believed it was (say) giving you $10 bills, when it was actually giving you $20 bills. I've seen that happen - as an insider, to hear more of the (dull) detail.

From what I recall, it gave me 4x $20 bills instead of 2x. I attempted the transaction, it made this “flipping bills” sound for an unusually long time, then gave me a “dispense” error message. But obviously the cash had partially made it through the machine and got stuck somewhere, because when I retried the transaction, it gave me both the cash from the successful transaction, and that from the earlier failed one. Only the successful transaction ever appeared on my bank statement as a proper ATM withdrawal, but obviously they somehow detected the previous one and processed it manually.

Your secret is safe with us ;)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com