Chile Forum

Today (Oct. 12) at BCI - NO Fee

BCI, that would be geat if true. Right now ScotiaBank is about my only option now that Itaú has gone over to the dark side. The others don't have branches close to me.

My card is US issued by Citibank - Cirrus.

Latest update:
Banco Bice today - no fee
I tried BCI last week but didn't take out money, the fee would have been 3,000
Banco Security last week (Tuesday, I think) - no fee
Scotiabank last Friday - no fee

Aus ATM Visa Debit Card - issued by NAB

Yesterday and today 350k at BICE zero fee
Yesterday 350k at BCI they wanted 3.3Mil in fees!

I forgot to mention that in Colombia last month we were both subject to fees at the ATMs (US and Chilean bank accts), They were usually around 5,500 Colombian pesos per withdrawal, a little less than US$3. A bit less, but still . . . It seems like this is becoming more common, I know others have reported similar fees in Argentina.

I guess it would be less annoying if you were just traveling in a place for a few weeks, but when you are living somewhere and depend on ATMs to access your money it's a different story. At least I am going to Providencia/Apoquiondo more these days for work and have found some ATMs there, like Bice and Security, that are not charging.

I am being lazy here - I know I should probably read the whole post
but - does this also apply to UK based bank with drawls?

To the above poster, Yes. The Chilean banks charge you for the dubious honour of using their machine, and more often than not, your home bank charges you for not using theirs (the fact that you're on a different continent is irrelevant to them). That being said, if your home bank is part of the Global ATM Alliance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_ATM_Alliance you're gold as Scotiabank is present here in Chile, so you will be fee free on both sides (confirmed on Friday, the 29th, still fee free and likely to stay that way unless they announce they are leaving the alliance) if you use Scotiabank.

I was talking to Charles yesterday (Nov 3) and asked him if he noticed any problems with the atm network. He said he didn't notice any. Well, I told him that I noticed some weird behavior.

Yesterday I was in downtown Temcuo trying to withdraw money from an atm. I stopped by the Scotiabank branch on the corner which is right across from Banco Security on the other corner. I was going to stop at Banco Security, but Scotiabank was right there.

I used my bank card to let me into the atm room. I put my card into the atm and entered my access number, etc. and got to the screen where you enter an amount to withdraw. I punch in the amount and press the button to continue. It sounds like the money shuffler is doing its thing briefly. I wait and wait and wait some more. I think that something's wrong here. I press the cancel button and then another button, but nothing happens at all. I wait some more and finally the card is kicked out. The beginning screen is showing on the atm How strange I think. Oh well, I put my card back in an go through the process again. This time the card is kicked out and I get a message saying transaction denied. Ok, enough of this. I go over to the atm at Banco Security and promptly try it two times and both times I get a transaction denied message. Well I have to go Jumbo and do some shopping. After I finish with the Jumbo shopping, I stop at the atm there to get some money. I needed to collect money for the rent. Twice I try to get money from the atm and twice a transaction denied message appears.

Well today I had to go out and withdraw money for the rent. Before I left the house I checked my account online. I noticed that there was a pending withdraw, one withdraw fee ($1 standard for my bank), and 5 separate entries for $1 each, listed as denied transactions. What???? I am not sure if this pending withdraw is from yesterday or not. I will check on it when I get back.

I go downtown and stop at Banco Security. I just passed by the atm at Scotiabank. I didn't want to mess with them today. I get to the atm at Banco Security and I successfully withdraw money. I head back home and check my account online. I see that today's successful withdraw is there and it is pending as well. I called my bank up (I use Vonage) and talk to them about the pending withdraw that I saw before I went to Banco Security today. Yes it was a pending withdraw from yesterday.

So what happened was that the first attempt to get money actually went through, even though the atm failed to give me the money or any indication that it had successfully completed the transaction. The following attempts were all denied because I was over my limit for the day and wasn't allowed to get more money.

I explained to the lady at my bank what had happened yesterday. I told her what happened at Scotiabank and my other failed attempts to get money at the other two atms. I told her that I did get money out today and that transaction is listed as pending.

She says this sort of thing does happen often. So they are going to issue a charge back which I should see in a few days. I didn't want to wait and see if there was going to be a charge back from Scotiabank.

There has been times in the past where I have had the atm go off into never-never land, but this is the first time it took my money with it.

Has anything like this happened to anyone else? Any other weird atm errors? Get more money than you asked for?

I remember once trying to take out 300,000 but it only gave me 30,000. Initially my bank showed a withdrawal of 300,000, but they fixed it pretty quickly once I called and faxed over the ATM receipt.

Can you go into the Scotia Bank and make a withdrawal with your cash card at the teller? On previous visits I tried to cash travelers cheques at the teller and they looked at me like I was mad! Now we rely on the ATMs, if that fails I'll be asking around for donations from the AllCHile community

Snowman628 wrote:Can you go into the Scotia Bank and make a withdrawal with your cash card at the teller? On previous visits I tried to cash travelers cheques at the teller and they looked at me like I was mad! Now we rely on the ATMs, if that fails I'll be asking around for donations from the AllCHile community

A while back I had to get a new ATM card and the envelope with the PIN got lost. While I was waiting for a replacement, I went to many banks to ask if I could get a cash advance at the counter. The only place I found that would let me do it was Banco Edwards. I had to go to customer service first then pick up the money at the teller. You might want to give them a try.