Realcent.org

Hello all,

Been researching my options and around my parts, there's little chance of dumping my zincs without using coinstar or opening an account at TD bank (45 minutes away). Has anyone had any experience with them and how do they rate? Good or bad Customer Service... etc., things like that.

Thanks much!

I have no problems with them. I just wish they would sell me bags! Hey, if they want to remain a dump bank I am happy to comply.

They have been a great dump bank for me. Very friendly and they really don't seem to mind all the pennies, well most of them anyway.

Before you make the drive just make sure the TD has a Penny Arcade (not all do, only about half down here), and that the counter is (ideally) one of the newer ones. Some of the old counters are so slow they make Coinstar start to look good.

Thanks for the responses! They do have a Penny Arcade so it looks like I'll be opening an account with them. I guess the upside to making the longer trip to a drop bank is that there's a half dozen other banks on the way there, so I should be able to buy some coin on the way there!

Thanks again!

The one that I have used to dump halves at has the counter set to stop at $100. They had to use 10 bags when I dumped $1000 in halves.

Try to avoid dumping dimes at TD bank. There have been many times that the machine has counted some of the dimes (sometimes a lot of them) as pennies.

Keep an eye of the tally count of coins you dump if they change the coin bags. A teller could accidentally reset the counter tally and wipe out the record of what you have dumped at that point. Jut ask them to tell you how much you have dumped at that point. Let them replace the bag and roll the unit back into the housing and get a receipt after that and then re-start the dumping again just to make sure the teller did not reset the counter and screw you over. I had tellers reset the tally twice on me and upset me. The first time it happened I had to wait for the bank to have Loomis confirm the audit on the coins they counted. Luckily I got my refund. The second time it happened it was the same branch as the first incident, but over a year later, and the more senior teller knew what happened after seeing the newbie teller screw up and took my word for it how much I was shorted. So, be careful with Penny Arcade. Make sure the bag-changing teller acknowledges how much you had dumped and the get a receipt printed out after that and then do another cycle of dumping. You can avoid the hassle of having a teller mess up and lose you coin tally this way.

CardsNCoins wrote:Try to avoid dumping dimes at TD bank. There have been many times that the machine has counted some of the dimes (sometimes a lot of them) as pennies.

I'll second that. Don't dump a lot of dimes at one time. KNOW ahead of time how much dollar amount you are dumping. Dump dimes separate from all the other coins and get a separate print-out receipt for that coin count. Penny Arcade does not show you a real-time display on the cartoon screen of how much you are feeding into it. Oh, also, check the return coin bin before you start dumping. If you leave it alone and fill a bag, the teller may scoop out whatever was in the return bin and put it in the coin feed hopper after they finish changing the bag. There may have been a silver dime or something in the return bin that you would want to keep. Also, ask the teller if you can keep the coins off the magnetic bar attached to the coin hopper. Most tellers don't care if you ask and they have told me they don't keep the (usually) Canadian coins that get attached to the magnetic catcher. They send it out? Who knows, I find pre-1982 Canadian 0.999 Ni nickels this way. I had a teller tell me that someone dumped a bunch of 1943 Lincoln pennies the other week and the magnet caught them. The savvy teller kept them too I was told, lol.

I haven't personally experienced the above issues but could see where they could happen. I mostly dump cents so haven't dealt with the bulk dime issue. But (while mostly resolved now) I experienced (many times) the lack of training issues with the tellers in these newer machines. In the branches I go to this now seems to be largely resolved but I think they were caused by basic lack of training and not enough experienced supervision, at the time. TD came into the area a year or two ago and rather quickly converted a large number of purchased branches and their people to TD en masse. The result was tellers (and managers) overwhelmed with new systems all at once and not enough experienced people to deal with things. There were a lot of issues with the Penny Arcades during those first 6 months. Most of those problems seem to be in the past now.

TD has some friendly people. I ran into a small problem about a month ago though. i was dumping my pennies there averaging 30 - 90 dollars at a time. they said theire was a change from corporate which says the machines are for kids dumping their pennies. They don't want to have the numbers of pennies dumped like we are doing. they asked if i wanted to close the account, but common sense availed, and i said not at this time. i only dumped once per week or so at the one bank.
on the brighter side, i have adjusted my 'dumping' technique at that bank. i only go there once per two weeks or so, and dump less than 40 dollars so they don't have to change their bags on me. As i said, the teller and most of them were very nice, it was a direction from corporate. so be responsible while dumping there, or we all could lose.

also i second what 68 camaro said, check if they have the new penny sorters. the old ones are very slow, but better than nothing.
good luck.

spacemanX wrote: i only go there once per two weeks or so, and dump less than 40 dollars so they don't have to change their bags on me.

Yeah, that is another piece of advice i missed giving. I keep my half-dollar dumps to less than a $100, sometimes maybe $60, or $70, for example, so as not to fill the half dollar bag. I am playing on the probability the bag will be empty but don't want to chance filling it and bringing the teller over. Believe me, the best effort is to use the coin counter but not have to have tellers have to come and assist you if you can help it. I've been cut off from other bank company machines because I had them have to service my dumpings too often with bag changes ( does that sound right? ). The bank manager gets wind of me using the bank like a tool and they just don't like that they are not making any money off of me dumping coins on them.

Yeah, the first few weeks of use I was dumping 60-100 bucks at a time. Always filled up the bags, and as nice as they are I could tell it was ticking them off. I quickly changed approach.

I now just keep a bucket of coin in the trunk and (without making special trips) just dump all week long as I'm driving around town, roughly $10 in cents at a time. I spread the load to mutiple branches and at the low levels - I now almost never trip a bag. Plus it lets me clean off more magnets more often for Canadian coin.

68Camaro wrote:Yeah, the first few weeks of use I was dumping 60-100 bucks at a time. Always filled up the bags, and as nice as they are I could tell it was ticking them off. I quickly changed approach.

I now just keep a bucket of coin in the trunk and (without making special trips) just dump all week long as I'm driving around town, roughly $10 in cents at a time. I spread the load to mutiple branches and at the low levels - I now almost never trip a bag. Plus it lets me clean off more magnets more often for Canadian coin.

Yup, what he said