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So I went to Bank of America the other day to withdraw some $ from my account.

While I'm standing there, I look down (like I always do), and couldn't believe my eyes. I saw 5 silver half kennedy dollars sitting in the teller's coin tray

I tell her immediately that I want to purchase all the half dollars in her tray and while I'm pulling money out of my wallet, I notice that she starts looking at them and realizes why I am requesting to purchase them. She takes the 5 silver ones and puts them conveniently behind her monitor next to her belongings, and hands me all the junk ones. I said " Why are you taking those out, I asked for all your coins.". Her reply " Oh you can't have them.". I said to her "Excuse me? Why can't I have them if they are clearly in your tray?", and her response was " They are for someone else.".

So as politely as I can possibly be, I started to really interrogate the teller now, despite how infuriated I was. Her explanation to me was that "someone else" (i.e. herself) had purchased them the other day and she forgot to give them to the person who purchased them and just left them in her tray. . WELL, to calm my frustration a little, I started to focus on the ones she handed me and realized that she had forgotten that 1965-1970 were the clad ones. Luckily, I found two, paid for them and gave her the junk ones back.

After I caught her in a bold face lie, she refused to speak to me, and made another teller handle my kennedy purchases.

Needless to say, I'm still pissed and wrote a nice, lengthy complaint letter, detailing everything that she did. Maybe I'm overreacting, but I really just want to hear what you guys think as I greatly respect everyone's opinion on this forum. I wasn't looking for trouble or to start problems by any means, but I just felt like this teller REALLY crossed the line, especially in the customer service area. I don't know too much about what teller's can and cannot do, but I felt this was completely unacceptable.

Man, I don't know. I feel your pain. Her mistake was leaving them there, one she's not likely to repeat. On the downside, I imagine a bank full of tellers getting into a big discussion over it regarding the value of silver coins. Maybe they'll all look for them now, but definitely won't leave them in the tray! As a matter of fact, if I was the manager and received a nasty letter, I would teach all my tellers about silver coins and make it a policy to never leave a silver coin in the tray. Problem solved.

Careful! Don't bite the hand that feeds. Tellers can be our biggest alies in this hobby and upsetting one can hurt you down the line. When that kind of thing happens to me and they know what their keeping I congradulate them on there find and try to strike up a side conversation. I try to make them feel good about their find and sometimes this opens them up and they share other good stuff they don't intend to buy. I got an eagle last month after some probing and words of encouragement. Just my 2 cents.

Same thing happened to me with some ikes... Just part of the hunt. Besides, I pull way more out of boxes so it is a good trade for me. BoA has been good to me overall and they are really a good dump bank. There is hardly a week that goes by that I'm not dragging in 5 or 10 bags of halves and over the last half of this year they have never been upset with me. Funny thing is they really like me because I fill out all of the bag info and my deposit slip. Which makes me thing who would ever dump bags and not fill out the info themselves...

Same thing happened to me when I saw some shinny dimes in a tellers tray, told her i'd like to purchase the "shinny" ones she told me "oh, i save those ones for my kids you can't have them" I was pretty mad, looking back on it maybe I should have got the manager involved. oh well.

newton7 wrote:Careful! Don't bite the hand that feeds. .

+1 to that. You can't expect every teller to be ignorant. Don't know what good it does to go over their head. I doubt that will get you any silver in the future. They'll just pull it out of the tray before you can even see it, and they won't be likely to do you any other favors in the future either. I too have been denied silver that I spotted before, but I just sucked it up and I still have a great source bank because of it. Just my 2 cents.

There are lots of different opinions on how to handle this, obviously. It's always better to make friends than enemies.

Once you decided to confront the teller, however, I would not have stopped until I talked to the manager. Loudly. Out in the open for all other customers to hear.

If it's in the tray, it's fair game. If the teller wanted them for herself, she should have pulled them from anyone's view before you asked for them.

The bank I have all my business with doesn't care if I bank there or not now that they know I search for silver, so I have nothing to lose. Being nice at that bank branch didn't pay off.

Bank of America Lie?????????????????? Tone at the top, if the executives are crooks, why would you be surprised that the tellers are crooks too.

Best to just let it go. The coins were in her tray and she can buy them if she wants. I don't think you were entitled to them.

Pissing off tellers is never a good idea. congratulate them on their finds and offer a decent price for the coins. I usually offer 70% of spot or tell them where they can sell them for 85% of spot. Most just sell to me because they don't want to take the time to make an extra 15%.


This works out for everyone.I am still getting cheap silver and I am not burning bridges.

that is bs.I had the opposite experience at a BB&T last friday making deposit the teller(around 65 yrs old)says "oh yeah you like coins right" she pulls out 22 mercs and 1 1963 half,she will be getting a whitman sampler for xmas.

you gotta take the good with the bad thats part of dealing with banks.and I agree with oober you dont want to piss of tellers had you played the situation a little different you might of been able to get her to save you the clad halves if she is only keeping 90%.

oober wrote:Pissing off tellers is never a good idea. congratulate them on their finds and offer a decent price for the coins. I usually offer 70% of spot or tell them where they can sell them for 85% of spot. Most just sell to me because they don't want to take the time to make an extra 15%.


This works out for everyone.I am still getting cheap silver and I am not burning bridges.

Buying at 70% sounds like a great opportunity. I must try that!

Seeing the entitlement mindset rear its ugly head in the PM arena remains disconcerting, regardless of how many times I see/read/hear of incidents like this.

Thanks for the advice everyone. This is the first time I have ever dealt with this situation, so everyone's wisdom is greatly appreciated. I usually go to another branch, as this one was 40+ miles from my home. I always treat my tellers nicely (and learned a few tricks from the trade thanks to RC.org!).

By no means do I feel entitled to the coins, nor am I trying to piss off the teller. What concerns me, is the fact that rather than telling me she was keeping them on the side, she lied about it, and secondly, they were in her teller's box. To me, that's fair game by all means.

I guess it really boils down to knowing their procedures before I go in. Is this the norm?

Oh and +1 to you Oober. That is an excellent idea about buying them from them at that rate.

oober wrote:Pissing off tellers is never a good idea. congratulate them on their finds and offer a decent price for the coins. I usually offer 70% of spot or tell them where they can sell them for 85% of spot. Most just sell to me because they don't want to take the time to make an extra 15%.


This works out for everyone.I am still getting cheap silver and I am not burning bridges.

Once a week I drop off a box off fresh donuts at the bank's(5 banks currently), for the price of 5 dozen donuts, when i walk into the bank i get immediate service in addition to all of them knowing who i am. Tellers are always asking me what i do with the coin... usually when they are helping me load it into my car. I explain that i am collecting the old ones that are silver(the kennedy 1/2's) so far out of the countless tellers I have had one ask me what they are worth. That teller I brought 1 40% silver coin and told her about Dansco Albums. She bought the album and whenever I see her I ask her If she needs any specific years. I'm sorry to ramble about all of this the tellers are the gateways to our product - Most of them don't have the time/interest/patience to do what it truly takes to build up a hoard. Its not just about access to the coin. Offering tellers a percentage of spot keeps them coming to YOU.

0000PaleHorse0000 wrote:Thanks for the advice everyone. This is the first time I have ever dealt with this situation, so everyone's wisdom is greatly appreciated. I usually go to another branch, as this one was 40+ miles from my home. I always treat my tellers nicely (and learned a few tricks from the trade thanks to RC.org!).

By no means do I feel entitled to the coins, nor am I trying to piss off the teller. What concerns me, is the fact that rather than telling me she was keeping them on the side, she lied about it, and secondly, they were in her teller's box. To me, that's fair game by all means.

I guess it really boils down to knowing their procedures before I go in. Is this the norm?

I see what you are saying. It is BS that she lied to you and what is in the tray should be fair game in my opinion. I was just saying that my normal operating procedure is to kiss butt at the banks rather than argue.

I know some anks where the policy is that the tellers cannot buy coins. Even if they institute that policy due to your letter, you won't get silver there again.

Just checked the the Magna carta and the United State's Constitution. Nothing in either states that anybody has a right to buy silver coins at face from a teller's tray.