Wells Fargo Pulls Plug On Coin Counting Machines, Following National Trend

Your big bank just got too big for small change. If you’ve been tossing your coins into a jar to build a stash of fun money or to start a savings account for your kids, you’d better hurry on in to Wells Fargo, or you’ll have to roll the quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies yourself.

The change counting machines in Wells Fargo lobbies in Minnesota are going the way of paper statements. Most will be gone from lobbies companywide within a few months, a Wells Fargo official said Wednesday.

Wells Fargo certainly isn’t alone in the decision to eschew the machines that swirl coins around and cough out a receipt. Chase removed its counters from its banks in July 2015. So did Capital One, TD Bank and PNC Bank.

“Our contract with our coin-counting service recently ended, and we anticipate that the removal of coin-counting machines will occur in Minnesota branches in the coming months,” Wells Fargo spokesman John Hobot told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The bank’s branches will provide coin wrappers, Hobot said, apologizing for “any inconvenience.” Businesses that receive a high volume of coins can “enroll in our large coin-deposit service,” he said.

But don’t start rolling quarters just yet.

Two other big Minnesota banks — U.S. Bank and TFC — told the Star Tribune they have no plans to remove the coin counters.

“Our customers tell us they like the convenience of having coin sorting machines,” TCF spokesman Mark Goldman said. “One of the challenges of accumulating coins is finding a way to quickly and easily turn that money into savings. ... Unlike some fee-for-service coin machines you see in retail locations, our customers know they can walk into one of our branches and not incur a fee for this service.”

One of the reasons banks are getting rid of the coin sorters is that they’re notorious for shorting people, according to an NBC “Today” investigation in April 2016. At one TD Bank location, the machine spit out a receipt for $256.90, nearly 15 percent less than the $300 fed into it. At other TD Bank locations tested in the Rossman Reports investigation, amounts were off by less than $1 at two locations, and by $3.73 at another.

The bank was named in a class action lawsuit filed in Manhattan the same month the “Today” investigation aired. In it, lead plaintiff Jeffrey Feinman said the bank represented its Penny Arcade machines as 100 percent accurate and cited the Rossman Reports findings as supportive evidence.

TD Bank said it was removing its Penny Arcade machines for maintenance, then made the decision to remove them altogether, according to bankrate.com.

“After much consideration, we determined that it is difficult to ensure a consistently great experience for our customers,” a spokeswoman for the bank said. “In addition, the use of coin-counting machines has declined steadily over the past few years. As a result, we have made the decision to retire Penny and provide alternative coin-counting solutions for our customers.”

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based PNC bank quickly followed suit.

Spokeswoman Marcey Zwiebel told the Pittsburgh Globe-Gazette in an emailed statement last spring that demand for the service is declining, but also that “we have taken recent media reports calling into question the accuracy of coin counters in the industry very seriously.”

A spokeswoman for Chase framed the decision to remove the coin sorters as customer service. In a statement to the Chicago Tribune, Christine Holevas said “counting the coins, whether manually or via a machine, slows service to our customers.”

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