The Bank Card

I was walking down Frimley High Street after visiting the chemist and decided I needed to get some money out of one of the cash machines. Instead of being a sensible lad, I did what I normally do and just walked out into the road, putting my hand up to say thanks, as cars were forced to stop as I limped my way over. The zebra crossing was too far away anyway, I justified my actions to myself, whilst carrying out this dangerously lazy manoeuvre.

I got to the other side unscathed and went to the LINK machine outside Santander. I went to pull my wallet out when I noticed that someone had left their bank card in the machine as it was hanging out the slot. Someone must have checked their balance or withdrawn some cash and then forgotten the card I thought to myself.

However, as the good Samaritan I am, I decided not to steal the card as many others would and I pulled the card out of the slot and looked at the name on it. It said “Mrs Mavis Granthorpe”. From the name I guessed it must have belonged to some forgetful 80 year old biddy as I looked up and down the street, to see if I could spot someone fitting that description. I couldn’t see anyone that looked like an old lady nearby, but the card couldn’t have been sitting in the slot for long otherwise the machine would have eaten it, so she must be nearby I assumed.

Therefore, I decided to call out and see if anyone heard me. “Has anyone left a bank card in this ATM?” I boomed down the road towards the chip shop to no reply. I then turned around and shouted the same question up towards the roundabout. This time a young Nepalese man turned around and put his hand in the air.

“Yes, yes, me, me” the man cried back to me all excited as if he had just won 10 grand on some crappy ITV game show. He started running towards me as I waved the card in the air. He obviously wasn’t the owner of the card and I guess he was hoping to rinse it by kiting it at some local stores just doing “Chip n Pin” purchases. 

These cards have suddenly got so easy to scam after all the hard work they put into making them harder to defraud someone. I thought back to the times they decided to beef up security and stop fraud by removing whole card numbers from receipts and adding the CV2 code to the back. In my day, if you wanted to use a dodgy card you had to fake signatures for cashbacks, or buy goods over the phone just repeating the name, card no and expiry date. Then the banks decided to hide the first 3 sets of 4 card numbers on receipts and added the 3 digit CV2 code on the back of the plastic.

Nowadays if you find a card, you can just go into most shops and just point it at a till. Buying what you want from shop to shop, as the amount you could buy with just a wave of a card increasingly got higher and higher, making it a fraudsters paradise. That’s why I use cash, no one knows what I buy, and you’d have to fight me to get it out of my wallet in the first place. These banks are just opening themselves up to fraud from numblets like this gimp running towards me I thought.

I waved the card in front of the man as he ran towards me, looking happy and pleased with himself.

“Is this your card Mavis?” I asked the numpty as he got closer.

“Yes sir, yes, my card, my card” he replied all eager and excited as I looked down at the name on the card once again to ensure this was not a Mrs Mavis Granthorpe in drag running towards me.

“So this is definitely your card then Mavis?” I asked again as the panting Nepalese man got close to me and then stopped his run. He was nodding his head constantly, not understanding what I had said obviously. He must speak very bad English I concluded as anyone else with a brain would have said no and scarpered. 

“Yes, yes, my card, my card”, he spoke breathlessly, “in the machine, I forgot, I forgot”. Well, he seemed pretty sure that the card was his, and who was I to leave a stranger without a source of someone else’s money I thought, as I held the card out towards him.

Then just as he moved his arm to take the card I turned around and opened the bank door instead, only to see a blonde lady raise her head from her desk. I smiled at her and turned back round to the man.

“Just come in”, I said, “it’s easier inside, I don’t want to be charged with theft or anything” The doofus duly followed me into the bank. I looked at the blonde lady behind the desk and walked towards her.

“Hi there, this young man, believes he is actually an Octogenarian woman called Mavis”, I said with a smile, as I showed her the card. “I just found it in the ATM outside and he claims it belongs to him”, I handed her the card and turned around to the man, and put my hand on his back gently pushing him towards the bank clerk.

“I’m sure she will sort it out for you” I smiled, nodding, hoping his English was so crap he had no clue what was going on. I gently pushed him towards the woman and left the bank. Happy in the knowledge that I had done the right thing and not gone kiting myself. 

I knew from my bad memory what it’s like to walk away from a cash machine without taking the £250 I had withdrawn, and not one of those cash machines that sucked it back in within seconds if no-one took it, but the tray types in shops and pubs, where it just sits there, waiting for someone to find it.

Maybe Mavis will get her card safely back after all I thought as I finally used the ATM but wondering whilst staring through the glass at the man madly nodding his head as if trying to convince the clerk he was really an old granny; a) why he was bothering and b) why no security had got him yet. 

Never mind not my problem I thought as I walked off down the road, once again forgetting the £200 quid I had just withdrawn from the ATM sticking out of the slot. Later when I arrived home to find my wallet blank, I wondered if karma really was a bitch, or whether someone would be so kind to me if they had gotten to my cash before it was sucked back into the ATM. There were only so many good Samaritans like me in the world. 

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