Some banks have a particular way of dealing with 'swallowed' debit cards. Yesterday evening I heard the story of a friend of mine who went skiing in Sankt Anton. He needed cash, but as he wanted too much in one time, the transaction was not authorized. So he tries again, but again it doesn't work, he presses cancel. Now his ATM card is swallowed by the machine. As it is still 5.30 he quickly steps inside the bank and claims his card back. The bank people say: "we can't do that right now, you'll have to come back tomorrow."
Next morning at opening time he arrives at the bank. A bank manager explains that his card was not found in the ATM and even goes at length to open up the ATM to demonstrate this. My friend persist that this is impossible but the bank manager also persists. Now my friend calls his bank to report his card missing, block the card en check if any transactions have already occurred. His bank blocks the card, confirms that no transactions have taken place the day before and advises my fried to have a police report drawn up.
Now my friend goes back to the bank manager and says that he needs his name etcetera as he is about to go to the police and file his card as missing. And then.... all of a sudden.... the bank manager goes to his desk, takes out my friends card and says that the card was found after all....
Now either the card has not been swallowed, but someone found it when it came back out of the ATM and brought it back to the bank (or threw it in the banks mailbox) or else we have an interesting case of internal bank fraud ....
