Caution On Using Ayudhya Bank Atms

[SiriusBlack1]

A friend of mine had a problem using a Bank of Ayudhya ATM. If he gets a satisfactory resolution I'll update here, but until then I recommend avoiding this bank. Here is his story. Anybody else have trouble with this bank?

I used a Bank of Ayudhya ATM (the yellow ones) to take out 20,000 baht. The machine returned an error message and spit out my card, nothing unusual, but when I took the amount out on another bank's ATM I found that 40,000 baht, not 20,000, had been debited from my account. A call to my bank overseas confirmed that three withdrawals (including an earlier one) had been registered, instead of the two I actually received.

I went into the Ayudhya Bank office on South Pattaya Rd and they seemed sympathetic, except for the security guards who hovered around me flexing, which didn't seem like good customer service. They took down my details and the manager said they'd get back to me in 24 hours.

[uhuh]

A friend of mine had a problem using a Bank of Ayudhya ATM. If he gets a satisfactory resolution I'll update here, but until then I recommend avoiding this bank. Here is his story. Anybody else have trouble with this bank?

I used a Bank of Ayudhya ATM (the yellow ones) to take out 20,000 baht. The machine returned an error message and spit out my card, nothing unusual, but when I took the amount out on another bank's ATM I found that 40,000 baht, not 20,000, had been debited from my account. A call to my bank overseas confirmed that three withdrawals (including an earlier one) had been registered, instead of the two I actually received.

I went into the Ayudhya Bank office on South Pattaya Rd and they seemed sympathetic, except for the security guards who hovered around me flexing, which didn't seem like good customer service. They took down my details and the manager said they'd get back to me in 24 hours.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

This has happened to me maybe 5 or 10 times (almost always Bangkok Bank and Kasikorn-Bank ATMs as I hardly use others) in about 10 years. The mistake has always been automatically corrected without me doing anything. Only the first time this took 3 months (that was 10 years ago). Usually it is corrected within a day or two.

[Yangpuss]

This sort of thing has happened to me twice, once in Eastern Europe and once in Thailand, at a Siam Commercial ATM. In both cases, the machine gave an error message and no cash, but then debited my account. I was able to get both items credited back, after a lot of hassle. In Siam's case, I went to their main office and asked them to look the transaction up on their computer record. They did, and it confirmed that no cash was dispensed. They gave me a copy of this, and I sent it to my home bank. Supposedly my home bank would have investigated and found this out for themselves, but I felt reassured having the evidence in hand.

[simey]

This is a 'window' that lots of ATMs have, but happens a lot with small dial-up ATMs. The machine asks for authorisation from your bank, which is given. Unfortunately the ATM loses the communication with it's host when the reply is sent back to it, and the authorisation reply gets lost. So the host thinks the money was paid, the ATM gave up and dropped it. It happens all over, I had it happen to me in the south of England. Luckily it's eas to investigate, the branch will check the journal roll at the back of the ATM which shows the transaction as incomplete. In my case my bank (First Direct) reversed the transaction as soon as I called them wit no questions asked.