Thursday, May 24, 2012

This is off topic, but is anyone else having trouble finding working Sovereign ATMs?

What I haven't seen in Boston lately.
A quick time-out for something completely different: has anyone else in the Boston area noticed that it's getting harder and harder to find a working Sovereign Bank ATM?

I'm a Sovereign Bank customer, and with my schedule, I usually find myself withdrawing about enough cash to last a week from an ATM sometime after normal business hours.  So I don't need an ATM all that often, but when I need cash, it's my only option.

And recently it has been harder and harder to find a working one.

Over the past few weeks, I have been frustrated by non-working Sovereign ATMs at the Boston Center for the Arts, at the Longwood Galleria, and in the Prudential Center.  Last week I discovered, as I dashed toward a restaurant one evening, that the Sovereign branch across from the Park Plaza only had a working ATM inside its locked lobby; the accessible one, mounted in its exterior wall, looked as if it had been broken for months, if not years.  And today I found that the Kenmore Square branch's lobby has a broken card reader, so I couldn't access that ATM, either.

Hmmm.  Does five broken ATMs constitute a pattern?  Does it constitute a conscious pattern?  I don't know, but I can say this - I haven't used a working Sovereign ATM in close to six weeks.  But rest assured, in each case I quickly found a nearby Bank of America ATM, but had to fork over $6 in fees to access my money - $3 to Bank of America, and $3 to Sovereign.

It occurs to me that this situation could amount to a tidy little revenue stream for this particular bank - it has already pocketed $15 of my money that it really has no right to have.  I admit I'm a little slow, but I'm beginning to think that if I don't find a working Sovereign ATM soon, it may be time to move my account someplace else.  Like even to Bank of America.

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