I’ve never had an issue with ATMs and I’ve been using them since 1979.
I lost a deposit and the things took my cards several times for which I got no explanation. I don’t miss them. I do everything on line now with a Visa which I pay off almost daily on line.
ATMs are fine for withdrawals, but for deposits they’re too risky. If an in person deposit goes awry the bank has a paper trail they trust to work with it, they officially don’t trust their own ATMs, so if they lose the check semi-officially assume the machine got spoofed and the check never actually existed. Much like with human tellers chances are nothing will happen, but if it you want it to happen where the bank assumes they made the mistake, not you.
Got my first ATM card in Seattle around 1974. It was nicknamed “TABBY” — Totally Automatic Banking By You.
43 years and I can count one malfunction — the machine gave me an extra $20 bill. I went into the bank and returned it...not so much as a smile or a “thank you.” For 20 years, I’ve wanted that 20 back.
A few times the machines have been down. Overall, the accuracy, reliability and convenience of those things is just incredible.
I’m a BofA Retiree.
Like every Bank, they are hamstrung by the same odious Procedures and Regulations of their Competitors. The complaints made about them are made about every other big Bank out there.
My Wife also worked for them way back when. I used to laugh when were at a Party or get together and someone we didn’t know overheard us talking about Work.
If I heard “you know what BofA did to may Account?”, I heard it a hundred times. When my Wife worked for another Bank, the same story.
When the Government let Financial Service Companies like American Express get into the Banking game, things only got worse.
As far as the ATM bashing, I starting using the original “Versateller” ATM’s when they were installed at our Data Center in Los Angeles. I would guess that was over 40 Years ago. In all that time, we had ONE issue with a Deposit not Posting correctly and that was with a very old Technology Machine.
Turns out the mistake happened at our ATM Processing Center, human error. Their Procedures helped track it down and it was resolved. With today’s Image Processing System, that error would have never occurred.
As far as the OP’s issue, I have never heard of a properly endorsed Check being rejected unless there is a special requirement from the Federal Treasury requiring the Account holders to match those on an Official Check.
Of course that seems a bit extreme considering all the Illegals going down to Walmart to cash their EITC Tax “Refunds” without a problem. #;^)