And next time have it when asked or we’ll do this again.
You can easily do a same-day wire transfer of this amount. Technically there’s no limit on the size of wire transfers. There’s probably a point where the bank will start asking questions, but car / mortgage down-payment sized transfers aren’t an issue.
But, yeah, I bet cash withdrawals are another ballgame. Not least because the bank probably doesn’t actually keep that much cash in typical customer-facing locations.
What the heck is that giant vault for if they ain’t got comically large sacks of money and so many coins, they cause an avalanche when opening the door?
The “large vault” you’re referring to is either old enough to predate the internet or full of safe deposit boxes for rent.
Even busy bank branches probably only need a vault the size of an armoire these days. People just don’t use much cash.
This made me recall an odd bank related situation that happened to me a few weeks ago, and which I am still a bit perplexed by.
Due to a couple of things coming up, I needed to stock up on some bills of various denominations. Nothing all that crazy, in my opinion, 20 $1 bills, 20 $5 bills, stuff like that, a few hundred dollars at most. Where else do you get bills like that? The bank, I assumed.
When I got up to the teller, I explained that I needed to pull out X amount from my account, and I that I needed specific number of each denomination. She looked at me like I was asking something completely unheard of. She even told me, I don’t think I have the money for that as she shuffled through some drawers.
Eventually she asked another teller who told her she’d have to go to the central terminal (I don’t recall the actual name they used) and make a request for each denomination. So the teller walked across the back of the bank to a computer that looked like it was from the 80s. After about 10 minutes of typing, with multiple people helping her, 2 people came out from a room, walked over to a floor vault and opened it. While one pulled out the cash I requested, the other stood guard. It was surreal. They counted the money twice, the teller counted the money twice, and then finally came back to the counter and gave me the deposit. She seemed to be barely holding back her level of irritation at me.
All that for just a few hundred dollars in cash. It had me really wondering if I was mistaken about the role and services provided by banks and whether I was out of line for asking to receive specific denominations. Was I supposed to leave a tip or something?
It’s amazing how stuff that was simple even twenty years ago is so unusual now. I’m in the UK and we simply do not have cheques any more, for example. About ten years ago I had to pay a supplier in the US by cheque and I actually had to go to my bank and get them to print one for me - the staff member who helped me said they’d worked there two years and it was the first cheque he’d had to produce. When I was a kid people paid with cheque constantly, everyone had a chequebook, though I’ve got to say I’m glad to see the back of them. If guess that withdrawing specific denominations of cash is the same. If I just wanted to withdraw an amount of money, I’d use my nearest cash machine, but to specifically ask for this quantity of that denomination is, presumably, a bit left field.
Sounds like either your bank is a local one struggling on business or its run by really incompetent management who failed to properly stock up the tellers. As them to pull out some 2$ bills next time everyone likes those
