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Our ATM went down the other day. This, of course, was accompanied by customers poking their heads round the door and yelling "why's this machine not working?" and "when's this machine going to be working?"
Day 1: I thought "well they should be here to fix it soon, they normally come within the day"(it reports faults itself)
Day 2: My day off. figured they would come fix it that day.
Day 3: Back at work, STILL not fixed! I phone Wincor Nixdorf, who manage nearly every ATM in the UK. They claim they logged a call with the ATM maintenance service, and they should be out "soon". Great. I made a sign in Wordpad to hang next to the ATM outside, saying something like
"the ATM is out of order. Cashback is available inside with purchases over £3. Apologies for any inconvenience, an engineer has been called."
I did this to try to limit the number of people asking us when it will be working etc. Later that day, about 1pm, an engineer shows up! Hurray! He opened the cupboard, and lifted the lid, and said "yup, theres a cash jam!" Then he phoned up for an opening code for the safe, and opened the safe. He pulled out the big cabinet with the cash cassettes in, and on the top, in the counting and dispensing mechanism, was the biggest jam of money ever. I mean, £10's and £20's lodged in every angle, ripped, torn, shredded, pulled apart by the mechanism! This guy then started pulling the money out, from every angle. It was currency carnage.
Then he pulled out the top cassette - which is like a "reserve" for money thats been left in the dispenser for too long that is sucked back in by the machine. IT WAS FULL!!! About £5000 in there! And £1000 lodged in the mechanism! The engineer said he thinks the dispenser part is faulty, because I told him customers had been getting their card back, but not the money - the money never came out. This was a complaint before the machine went down. So the money has been going back into the reserve, and this got full, then the mechanism got jammed.
Anyway, after he cleared the jam, he did a dispense test, it counted £50 and ran it to the dispenser, you could see it doing it. Then it drew it back into the reserve (which he had emptied). Anyhow, he told me that it appears to be working OK now, but if it does go down again with this fault, it needs a new counter/dispenser, at a cost of £1500
(we dont have to pay this, its not actually our machine, but the cost of the spares amazes me! They aren't even new parts, just refurbished!)
This ATM is a real source of customer suckiness for the staff in our shop. The next ATM is about half a mile away and not many people round here own cars. Many people just want to check their balance, and the machine is set up so any failure in the machine will shut it down, so you cant even get a balance. It broke down a record 3 times last week! So I'm not very pleased with it. I hope it does break down again, because we will get a new dispenser then, and it wont break down for a while!
A lot of customers treat this machine as a "right", not a priviledge. I mean, what did they do before it was installed 3 years ago???
Out of interest, has anyone seen the front of an ATM taken off? This was cool, theres 2 clips in the back of the machine that retain the front to the wall, and the front slides out, on runners! I always assumed all work could be carried out from behind, but the guy who came cleaned the back of the glass screen and the money slot.
Day 1: I thought "well they should be here to fix it soon, they normally come within the day"(it reports faults itself)
Day 2: My day off. figured they would come fix it that day.
Day 3: Back at work, STILL not fixed! I phone Wincor Nixdorf, who manage nearly every ATM in the UK. They claim they logged a call with the ATM maintenance service, and they should be out "soon". Great. I made a sign in Wordpad to hang next to the ATM outside, saying something like
"the ATM is out of order. Cashback is available inside with purchases over £3. Apologies for any inconvenience, an engineer has been called."
I did this to try to limit the number of people asking us when it will be working etc. Later that day, about 1pm, an engineer shows up! Hurray! He opened the cupboard, and lifted the lid, and said "yup, theres a cash jam!" Then he phoned up for an opening code for the safe, and opened the safe. He pulled out the big cabinet with the cash cassettes in, and on the top, in the counting and dispensing mechanism, was the biggest jam of money ever. I mean, £10's and £20's lodged in every angle, ripped, torn, shredded, pulled apart by the mechanism! This guy then started pulling the money out, from every angle. It was currency carnage.
Then he pulled out the top cassette - which is like a "reserve" for money thats been left in the dispenser for too long that is sucked back in by the machine. IT WAS FULL!!! About £5000 in there! And £1000 lodged in the mechanism! The engineer said he thinks the dispenser part is faulty, because I told him customers had been getting their card back, but not the money - the money never came out. This was a complaint before the machine went down. So the money has been going back into the reserve, and this got full, then the mechanism got jammed.
Anyway, after he cleared the jam, he did a dispense test, it counted £50 and ran it to the dispenser, you could see it doing it. Then it drew it back into the reserve (which he had emptied). Anyhow, he told me that it appears to be working OK now, but if it does go down again with this fault, it needs a new counter/dispenser, at a cost of £1500
(we dont have to pay this, its not actually our machine, but the cost of the spares amazes me! They aren't even new parts, just refurbished!)This ATM is a real source of customer suckiness for the staff in our shop. The next ATM is about half a mile away and not many people round here own cars. Many people just want to check their balance, and the machine is set up so any failure in the machine will shut it down, so you cant even get a balance. It broke down a record 3 times last week! So I'm not very pleased with it. I hope it does break down again, because we will get a new dispenser then, and it wont break down for a while!
A lot of customers treat this machine as a "right", not a priviledge. I mean, what did they do before it was installed 3 years ago???Out of interest, has anyone seen the front of an ATM taken off? This was cool, theres 2 clips in the back of the machine that retain the front to the wall, and the front slides out, on runners! I always assumed all work could be carried out from behind, but the guy who came cleaned the back of the glass screen and the money slot.
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