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My brother has a account in the Singapore branch of OCBC bank, this is his salary account. He is right now in US into his training.

2 days back when he went to a 3rd party bank ATM(OCBC has no ATM in his place) to withdraw money, he was not able to withdraw the cash, the machine threw some error messages. He tried to withdraw again thrice, but it did not work. So he came home empty handed, but was shocked to find out when he logged-in to his OCBC account to find that the money was debited, thrice.

He immediately contacted the US bank's ATM where he had tried withdrawing the money, but they washed their hands off saying that this matter has to be raised with OCBC bank. When he tried contacting OCBC, they are saying they cannot action on his complaint without a written physical complaint letter.

I find this request by OCBC bank, a modern bank in the internet savvy Singapore not to respond to a request from a customer who logs-in to the bank's site using 2 password, one a secur-id one, absurd.

He works in the night shift, so he is not able to send the physical letter. Also, he coming to India next week(vacations), so if he sends a letter now and the reply is sent to his US address no-one would be there when it comes after next week.

What is the remedy for this situation? My shopping list is stuck because of this.please:

It happened to me once with BOA but was a case with single bank.They called me instead reporting the same as no net banking was present then and i was awaiting my statement. The whole amount was credited back to my account.

In your case you will have to contact the bank whose ATM he was operating, giving them the account details of the Debit card he was using.

Once they find the discrepency in the cash disbursement from the ATM machine. They will refund it back to the same account.

For correspondance give a friends address/ email id too.

When this happened to me in India, I just called the bank's callcenter and raised it with the ATM transaction ID, they credited the amount back to my account. But in my case the ATM and the bank were the same entity. If they are different, I am sure it would be a long process - written letter, my bank checks with the ATM's bank, verifies record, etc, etc. If it is international, then :( - it may take a while, or so I feel.

I agree with Dadu, had happened with me too with ICICI they check the cash at ATM & Then got back the money.

Ask him to call up his bank & if they are persistent about a physical letter then ask him to Fax one to them.

Ask him to contact the ATM provider and lodge a formal complaint. The bank should be able to trace this at the EOD settlement and the money should be back in his account. It would take sometime as Bank would need to dig out the cash totals from the ATMs and not all of the ATMs are maintained by banks.

Not sure how it works in the US but here, if the error message printouts are kept, that is proof enough, even for a 3rd party ATM - I had a similar problem at an Axis Bank ATM when I was accessing my ABN Amro account. Money wasn't dispensed but my account was debited.

I called up the ABN Amro helpline, they gave me a credit in my account & thereafter took up & resolved the issue with Axis Bank. They did ask me to keep the slips containing the error messages handy though, in case they were required.

Normally the receipt from the ATM will show a debit and a credit (xxxx debited and -xxxx credit) meaning that the transaction is cancelled as it could not be processed.

Happened to me many times but luckily did not get into such a mess. Very rarely do I use other bank's ATM's.

Ensure this receipt is kept handy and a copy is sent to the bank.

All the transactions in ATMs have an internal software code using which they can trace any failed or successfull transaction. They are all recorded by that banks ATM machine including cash disbursal & debit/credit of account. So your brother needs to take some time off after his night shift, send a mail to both the banks and report them of the ATM place, Time, Your card number and the amount & then the wait begins. They will take some time to reconcile records with the service provider (Visa/MasterCard/ETC) as this is an inter-bank transaction. All you can do is wait on them.

What happens if a person chooses "NO" when he is asked "Do you want a receipt for this transaction? "

He will have no receipt as proof - then ?

It doesn't matter to the machine. When you do a transaction, you will hear a printer record the transaction. That is one record. Then the ATM switching software also keep track of failed and successful transactions with response codes. Remember that response code 0 / 52 /53/ 72 etc that you see when you have a failed transaction. It is all registered there.

Of course, if you have a printed record of it, all the merrier.

This happened once when I "tried" to withdraw cash with my german card in Chennai from an ICICI ATM, it did not work but my account was debited. However, when the transaction is actualized it will be credited back to your account in a span of 3-4 days (should), I got it back without problems and I had not even contacted the bank.

Now there is a new twist to the tale, more people have come forward to report the same kind of problem from his company.

All of them have the account in OCBC bank, not sure if they all tried to withdraw from the same ATM. But everyone did not get their money. I am sure this case will get more headline with OCBC now, since it cannot be mere coincidence that customers can complain about a same nature of problem at the same time at the same place in US.

He is going to send a physical copy to the bank today, they told no fax too, they are insisting on a physically signed copy from him(this is what gets me angry). They have told him in their e-mail that it may take almost 15-20 days to get the money back, if at all.:Frustrati

BTW, the amount of cash stuck is $2500 for my brother alone, more when we take into account others.

In that case most proabably OCBC bank is at fault.
Both banks will have transaction logs, so no real risk. Also keep the receipts, you'll need those.

All ATMs will have more than one type of tracking system-total transactions-total cash disbursed,machine logs (hardware) transaction logs etc.If the problem is genuine one should get the money back without issues.Exception is cash has been disbursed but not collected.

most machines are programmed to take back the cash within a stipulated time (mostly 30/60 seconds) and the transaction is reversed.

So i dont think that that is a possibility.