TD Bank penny arcade...convenient? yes and no.

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It is great to have a no-fee way to get coins sorted and counted, but the part I like most about it is the ability to not get a teller involved when I'm unloading coins (I'll refrain from saying "taking a dump" here....oh crap, i just said it anyway.).
This is the problem with the Penny Arcade though...it fills up WAY too quickly. Yesterday, I took in ~$150 in halves, and ~$150 in nickels. The teller needed to come replace the bags THREE times. That definitely draws attention to me while i'm dumping coins, and I don't like that.
It seemed to me that it was pretty frustrating for the teller to have to leave her post behind the counter and come over and help me out 3 times in 10 minutes. She was friendly enough, and i tried to keep the mood light and joke around about it, but I can't imagine their patience lasting very long if I do this a few times a week. I definitely don't want to become the annoying guy with all the coins.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents on the TD Penny Arcade...it's great for taking small dumps i suppose (dangit, i said it again.)

As a side note, I took $150 in rolled halves to a different dumping ground, and the teller said "oh, you're going to make an old guy very happy. he comes in every week asking for half dollars." I felt bad for about 2 seconds...until i thought about how may of that old man's dumped coins I've probably looked through. So in the end, the old man will get another $150 to look through when I take some more back tomorrow

 

[AGBlex]

i love it hahah ! you have your moment of getting the old man back but how can the teller not know you've looked through them... Silly bank employees

 

[Generic_Lad]

Not sure about the penny arcade, but most other machines let you choose how much you want to put in each bag. For example, if you dump a lot of halves and the bags can hold more than, say the $100 they are programmed to "fill" at, you might ask if they can increase it to say $500 because it would make their jobs easier. It is really up to the bank how much they keep in bags. For example, at my main bank they have $50 pennies, $100 nickel, $500 dime, $500 quarter and $500 halves, not sure how much they keep with small dollars though. However, another bank has pennies that fill at $25 and others that fill at $1000 for quarters and dimes.

 

[WormtownFJR]

Not sure about the penny arcade, but most other machines let you choose how much you want to put in each bag. For example, if you dump a lot of halves and the bags can hold more than, say the $100 they are programmed to "fill" at, you might ask if they can increase it to say $500 because it would make their jobs easier. It is really up to the bank how much they keep in bags. For example, at my main bank they have $50 pennies, $100 nickel, $500 dime, $500 quarter and $500 halves, not sure how much they keep with small dollars though. However, another bank has pennies that fill at $25 and others that fill at $1000 for quarters and dimes.

I've heard someone mention that recently on this board and it was news to me. The problem with increasing the amount of halves is that the bag is actually cut in half so it's shorter and fits in above the reject slot so the machine would have to be open for you to dump without problems requiring a teller who's not busy. Those machines are such amazingly fast sorters, though accuracy is their issue. Coins invariably are counted as the wrong denomination and there is a small(usually < 1%) loss of coin. That's why its best to do just pennies there.

 

[Generic_Lad]

Not sure about the penny arcade, but most other machines let you choose how much you want to put in each bag. For example, if you dump a lot of halves and the bags can hold more than, say the $100 they are programmed to "fill" at, you might ask if they can increase it to say $500 because it would make their jobs easier. It is really up to the bank how much they keep in bags. For example, at my main bank they have $50 pennies, $100 nickel, $500 dime, $500 quarter and $500 halves, not sure how much they keep with small dollars though. However, another bank has pennies that fill at $25 and others that fill at $1000 for quarters and dimes.

I've heard someone mention that recently on this board and it was news to me. The problem with increasing the amount of halves is that the bag is actually cut in half so it's shorter and fits in above the reject slot so the machine would have to be open for you to dump without problems requiring a teller who's not busy. Those machines are such amazingly fast sorters, though accuracy is their issue. Coins invariably are counted as the wrong denomination and there is a small(usually < 1%) loss of coin. That's why its best to do just pennies there.

It just depends on the size of the bag and such. The counters that I've worked with have a full sized bag (as in, they can hold $1K face fairly easily for all the "silver" denominations) and they use the same bag for all of the slots and there generally is a reprogram function that lets you set how much you want to do before the machine stops and you have to change the bag. With no CRHer in the area, most tellers would rather change bags a bit more often lug a $1K bag to the vault.

 

[dossier]

Not sure about the penny arcade, but most other machines let you choose how much you want to put in each bag. For example, if you dump a lot of halves and the bags can hold more than, say the $100 they are programmed to "fill" at, you might ask if they can increase it to say $500 because it would make their jobs easier. It is really up to the bank how much they keep in bags. For example, at my main bank they have $50 pennies, $100 nickel, $500 dime, $500 quarter and $500 halves, not sure how much they keep with small dollars though. However, another bank has pennies that fill at $25 and others that fill at $1000 for quarters and dimes.

I've heard someone mention that recently on this board and it was news to me. The problem with increasing the amount of halves is that the bag is actually cut in half so it's shorter and fits in above the reject slot so the machine would have to be open for you to dump without problems requiring a teller who's not busy. Those machines are such amazingly fast sorters, though accuracy is their issue. Coins invariably are counted as the wrong denomination and there is a small(usually < 1%) loss of coin. That's why its best to do just pennies there.

It just depends on the size of the bag and such. The counters that I've worked with have a full sized bag (as in, they can hold $1K face fairly easily for all the "silver" denominations) and they use the same bag for all of the slots and there generally is a reprogram function that lets you set how much you want to do before the machine stops and you have to change the bag. With no CRHer in the area, most tellers would rather change bags a bit more often lug a $1K bag to the vault.

I've read discussions about this on here before. So I decided to ask a TD teller about this about 2 weeks ago. I said to her that I've asked other TDs to do it and they did so willingly. She immediately shot me down saying "Ohh they're not supposed to be doing that! Our coin supplier makes us use $100 bags." I believe they used brinks or maybe dunbar. I see dunbars driving around all the time in that town.