Wells Fargo Removing All Free Coin Counters! Nooooooooo!!!

Everygood thing comes to an end, though I suspect some time in the future there will be a major bank that reinstates free coin counters.

Free coin counters at major banks (at least on the east coast) were first popularized by Commerce Bank, which used them to drawn in customers and have them defect their accounts from other banks. Commerce also was one of the first major banks on the east coast to have sunday hours, and were open much later than other banks on regular business days. It was all part of founder, Vernon Hill's, plan to aggressively attack the deposit base of other banks to build his own, and it worked well, with Commerce bank seeing massive growth (25% increases in deposit base a year). Commerce was so successful that other medium sized expansionary banks (like PNC) were forced to adopt many of Commerce's practices (including coin counters) to compete. That all came to an end when Vernon Hill was driven out of the company (for self dealing) by the Fed, and it was subsequently taken over by TD. TD Bank has pretty much scrapped Vernon Hill's growth model. I worked at Commerce up through the TD takeover.
I suspect eventually free coin counters will make a comeback when some small bank decides to follow Vernon Hill's growth model.

In my area, PNC and TD banks both recently decided to get rid of the machines. This, I believe, was in response to a television report that some of the machines at TD were ripping people off (inaccurate totals). PNC quickly followed suit by eliminating their machines, and now it seems that other banks are doing the same.

Fortunately, I also have a credit union which still has a free one (for members), and it is routinely inspected by the Bureau of Weights and Measures.

I just used some blank paper rollers to wrap some halves a few days ago. The bank teller told me to open the rolls up and put them through the machine. Arrrgh!

In a sense, I feel blessed that I never have had the convenience of these machines... I've always done my own rolling, so it's a little hard for me to put myself in the shoes of someone else who has been able to use them. It must be a big change for those of you who have been used to their convenience.

i took in 345$ in quarters yesterday to wes banco and the machine charged me 17.50 to count it... >:(

That's no bueno. It would take you finding 6 silver ones to cover that loss.

Look on the bright side. If people have to roll their coins, we will all be finding more coins in customer wrapped rolls instead of those that come directly from the Federal Reserve.