Posted on 05/19/16
| News Source: VIN
Cherry Hill, NJ - TD Bank, today announced that it has decided to permanently retire its fleet of Penny Arcade coin-counting machines.
In early April, TD suspended temporarily its coin-counting service following news reports identifying inaccuracies with some of its machines.
“Offering free coin-counting to our customers has been a long-standing service at TD,” said Michael Rhodes, Head of Consumer Bank, TD Bank. “However, recent accounts regarding the performance of our Penny machines have led us to reassess this offering. We have determined that it is difficult to ensure a consistently great experience for our customers. In addition, the usage of our coin-counting machines has declined steadily over the past few years. For these reasons, we have decided to retire the fleet and provide alternative coin-counting solutions to our customers. We will continue to assess the Penny experience and intend to appropriately address customer impact,” added Rhodes.
TD’s protocol has included daily testing of each Penny machine, with routine and needs-based maintenance. Whenever a customer has reported a problem with a particular machine or transaction, TD’s policy has been to provide immediate credit. However, with thousands of individual customers using more than 1,000 Penny machines from Maine to Florida each day, TD was concerned Penny may not always meet its standard for outstanding customer service.
The decision to fold what had been a popular free service at TD followed an NBC report in early April that Penny Arcades in five locations inaccurately counted $300 packets of coins. And in no location did the counting error favor the customer.
Other news reports and accounts by individual customers further called into question their accuracy, prompting at least two lawsuits alleging the machines routinely shortchanged people.