Safe-deposit boxes
Glen2022
Posts: 947 ✭✭✭✭
I recently went to my safe deposit box to remove some coins and was told by the teller that my bank, Chase, in California, is eliminating safe-deposit boxes, at least at this branch. He advised that I keep the SDB as if I let it go, I would not be able to get another. I don't know whether or not this is true at other branches or other banks.
Has anyone else had this experience?
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I am confused by your post? They are getting rid of the safety deposit boxes.... but they are advising you to 'keep' it? I know I don't have the sharpest tools... but seem to be missing something.....
A lot of banks have stopped offering SDBs.
They usually stop offering them before they start to phase them out for existing customers.
I don't think they bring in enough income from the SDBs and for them its more of a hassle and a waste of space. A lot of banks have been phasing them out, and I wouldn't even be interested in having one unless it was privately insured by me. Some of the horror stories I've heard over the years....
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I started renting one last year. Capital One and Chase banks in my area had stopped with new rentals so I went with PNC and I just was told by one of their tellers a couple of weeks ago that they are no longer accepting new rentals there either.
Beginning last year, "JPMorgan Chase is starting to phase out its safe deposit box service from its branches, Bloomberg has reported."
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Just one more thing that banks are doing to ruin their customer service.
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So I guess the next question is where is a good place to store your collection if you don't want to keep it at your house and you can't find a SDB?
I know Chase stopped in early 2022 and Capital One in 2021.
Some of the smaller regional banks will still rent them. They see this as a customer service and also to attract new customers. I have never had a box closed on me, yet. I did have a bank branch close (Capital One) so I had to vacate the boxes.
I agree they are not money makes and now they are worried about liability, what Chase told me.
I guess I don't know of any personal horror stories associated with SDB. I have read some stories of collectors that had their collections in banks in cities with rivers prone to flooding (ND and IA). They had the box low in the vault and the vault filled with flood water and it was several weeks before they could get in. It did not end well for the coppers and paper money. Also, it seems every 10 years someone tunnels into a bank vault.
I don't know about private insurance and how good it is. My experience with home/auto insurance is they don’t like to pay and if they do it is just a loan and they will recover the claim with higher rates (which don't go down).
Regarding the insurance, I was just applying for a Hugh Wood policy the other day. I've heard that they are reliable and they offer coverage for your home, bank sdb, and transportation to and from those locations. With the premium service your coins are insured against anything, anywhere in the US. I have yet to see what it costs, but if they don't fight on claims It might be a good value.
Horror stories- This is the most recent one that came to mind, though I've heard of other similar stories where a bank discontinued its SDB service, and the majority of clients were not notified by the bank. A reporter did some investigating and was able to get in contact with more customers than the bank did, they made a half assed effort to let people know the items were being collected and stored until they went up for auction without the owners knowledge.
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never had a SDB never saw a need in such things, my collection is at my house where it has been stored since 2003 in a old china display cabinet in plain view
https://www.omnicoin.com/collection/colind?page=1&sort=sort&sale=1&country=0
Safe deposit boxes are considered to be a losing proposition by the banks. They require lots of space and security. They also require staff to assist the users of the safe deposit boxes. Staff cuts are now the way to go with many banks so this is just one more reason to get rid of safe deposit boxes. My own bank moved it's location a couple of years ago. The old location had a large safe deposit box section. The new location has none.
No problems or changes here in South Carolina - I've had my collection in a SDB for decades with no issues.
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Yeah, well, it's a race to the bottom. People don't want to pay fees, so banks are eliminating things that cost them money, like good customer service.
Chase does have their stellar 0.01% interest rate to distinguish themselves...
@DeplorableDan thanks for the knowledge drop on Hugh Wood. I'm sending in an application today assuming I hear back from my branch with answers on a few of the specific questions about the construction of the branch location.
Thanks for your reply.
I have heard of private, no ID just the key, you sign nothing and they let you, in private vaults having some problems. I was looking at one just incase everyone makes you get of of their SDB. The one I was looking at did get raided. just a couple of boxes. They guy was embezzling money and was having armored cars deliver gold bars to his box. The FBI tracked the armored cars.
I figure I don't store drugs, stolen property or unreported cash so I am OK (nor secret or classified documents)
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Curious if anyone has experience actually make a claim against a company like Hugh Woods and how it worked for them.
As someone who works in financial services and a coin collector, I followed this story very closely. I would put a very bright line in between privately offered (and particularly shady) SDBs and those offered by a bank.
The bank is required to collect ID and Know Your Customer info so if the FBI decides to raid they will just get a search warrant for a specific box, not the entire vault.
In that private SDB case, the FBI acted reprehensibly against many of the lessors and lost a court case afterwards (although that doesn't reimburse the innocent for their time and stress). However, the operators were legitimately shady and so the FBI raided the entire vault. I don't think that is likely to happen at Chase or BofA or whatever (they are shady on much larger scales
)
Yes, that goes without saying! The bottom line is that online competition has probably taken a nice chunk out of that. More importantly, regulators have been cracking down on some of the really obnoxious fees that banks have been feasting on for decades.
The result is off-shore call centers and the elimination of services customers used to take for granted, like conveniently located branches all over the place, and SDBs. Get used to it.
One way or the other, the banks are going to get theirs. They probably correctly figured that people would not be willing to pay $500+ for a small box, to make it worth their while, and then dealing with the blow back from even trying, so they are just eliminating the service.
If there is a viable market for SDBs, one will develop. But, given how banks are having their traditional revenue sources squeezed or eliminated, it's not reasonable to expect them to continue offering SDBs as loss leaders. Especially since their focus is now pushing customers out of the branch, rather than attracting them to it.
On a separate note, most of the larger bank locations will likely maintain they SDBs for some time as removing the vaults would be an enormous expense. That doesn't really help anyone who doesn't live near one of these or already have a box.
I have a pretty heavy duty safe at home and maintain a large SDB at the bank for longer term storage. If the bank got rid of the SDBs I would invest in an even heavier duty safe at home. That would probably be ~$1500ish which is 10 years of rent for my SDB.
For many, a smaller (but heavy duty, not electronic Costco model) safe would likely work at the cost of 5-10 years SDB rentals. Worthwhile if you have a valuable collection.
Excerpts from a NYT article...
In the early 1980s, when Philip Poniz moved to New Jersey from Colorado, he needed a well-protected place to stash his collection of rare watches. He had been gathering unusual pieces since he was a teenager in 1960s Poland, fascinated by their intricate mechanics. His hobby became his profession, and by the time of his relocation, Mr. Poniz was an internationally known expert in the history and restoration of high-end timepieces.
At first, he kept his personal collection in his house, but as it grew, he wanted something more secure. The vault at his neighborhood bank seemed ideal. In 1983, he signed a one-page lease agreement with First National State Bank of Edison in Highland Park, N.J., for a safe deposit box.
Then, on April 7, 2014, he lifted the thin metal lid. Box 105 was empty.
In the days after Mr. Poniz found his box empty, he began piecing together what had happened: Wells Fargo had apparently tried to evict another customer for not keeping up with payments, and bank employees had mistakenly removed his box instead. After drilling No. 105 open, the bank shipped its contents to a storage facility in North Carolina. After Mr. Poniz discovered the loss, Wells Fargo sent back everything it had in storage, but some items had vanished.
In a six-page report filed with the Highland Park Police, Mr. Poniz described the watches, coins, documents and other items that were gone. Using auction records and sales reports, he estimated that their combined value was more than $10 million. That would make it one of the largest safe-deposit-box losses in American history.
The number of bank branches in the United States has been steadily declining — down 10 percent in the last decade — and safe deposit boxes are being relocated, evicted and sometimes misplaced. In Maryland, a large bank closed several branches and lost track of hundreds of safe deposit boxes, according to a lawsuit filed by a customer who said he lost gold and gems valued at $500,000. In Florida, a customer accused Chase of losing her box and all of its contents — coins, jewelry and family heirlooms worth more than $100,000. In California, a Wells Fargo customer said the bank accidentally re-rented her box; the diamond necklace and other jewels she had in it were never found.
From Safe Deposit Boxes Aren’t Safe, here: https://archive.is/oXfKC
I guess some of this you do your best to protect yourself and your valuables. Ever time you get in a car you run a risk. Every time you get on a commercial flight you run a risk. I don't mind the idea of a safe at home. I hope that if they decided to do something I am not home. Hopefully, my alarm and cameras will stop it before it is too far along.
I don't care how big your safe is if they come in when you are home they don't need a key or the combination. They have you, or your loved one, that is my biggest fear.
That's why a few of my guns stay out of the safe, in the nightstand or under the bed. I don't have children yet so I don't mind staying locked and loaded. That being said, once my collection reaches a certain value I would possibly be more comfortable if I used a SDB, but I would just still have insurance on it for the unimaginable scenarios we read about every now and then.
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You just about have to, banks don't offer insurance on them (for obvious reasons).
I don't mean to diminish these peoples' accounts, I can only imagine how I would feel if something like that happened to me. At the same time, I would say the same thing about airplane crashes. These are awful anecdotes but they are anecdotal and a tiny fraction of all SDB experiences.
I don't have the data to back it up but I would wager quite a bit that a lot more is lost to burglary and fires at home than the occasional bureaucratic bank snafu.
'Back in the old days' in home safes, either large fireproof ones or smaller portable safe boxes were not that common or readily available so folks would put their documents and other valuables in SDB's and they were at many bank branches. Now it is much easier IMO to store things in your home.
K
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Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value. Zero. Voltaire. Ebay coinbowlllc
My house has closet with a hidden door, and I have thought about putting a safe in there but it would have to be a water proof safe. Maybe now is a good time to start thinking about it more seriously.
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I've inquired about SDBs before locally... my Credit Union doesn't have them, PNC is phasing them out, as I believe WF is too...
So, my approach was just to put them in my gun safe in a locked room. This, with Ring and a 75 lb pit bull distracts most would be thieves...
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I moved out of a Chase SDB last summer before the announcement, the manager said they were not allowing any new customers to rent boxes. Regional banks could be a good option but all have risk, I have two a block away from the local police station, and visit them often. Home safes can invite trouble, a local armed home invasion hauled off a safe. Being locked and loaded is good, criminals are getting more brazen.
Years back, a friend of mine, a scrap dealer had a contractor dump a load of safety deposit boxes off in his yard. They stayed outside for about 2 years. Then one day they were gone. I asked my buddy about them and he said 2 boxes were never opened. The first box had 10 K in Canadian money, Rolex and a 14 k watch, and the second box ... he looked at me and smiled.... HE never told me ..... Him and his wife went on a 2 week vacation and he never did say what was in the second box....
I've stored coins and bullion in safte deposit boxes and safe storage units but that can be risky. Also used my own safe; some advise ones you can bolt to the floor.
sorry about the confusion. At least for now, those who have an SDB can keep it, Chase is not renting out new ones. I suspect that at some point in time, as the number of safe deposit boxes in the vault diminishes, they will consolidate them into other branches and ultimately, eliminate them all.
please share with us your address.
I think the thing I dislike the most about having a safety deposit box is that my collection feels less like mine and more like I’m going to a library to check something out. Anyone else with a SDB feel this way or am I being neurotic?
Bury it out back way up on the north 40. RGDS!
I used to have 2 boxes at different Wells Fargo branches, they closed one branch completely and I received notice to empty the box. While at the other box I mentioned this to the bank employee who informed me that they aren't accepting new rentals at that branch either, but will continue with existing boxes.
The right answer is
You keep it at your house.
And a MAP. YOU need a MAP.
Back when I lived in KC we came back from a weekend trip to find our house being broken into. We got pretty lucky and according to the alarm monitoring records we arrived one minute after the thieves did. In that one minute’s time the thieves had still managed to pull the safe partially out of the master bedroom closet.
The best we could figure is that some people we had in the house to do work the week prior went looking through our bedroom while my wife wasn’t paying attention and saw the safe. The police said we had the dubious distinction of being the only house in the neighborhood that had ever been broken into in the 5 years that the neighborhood had been around.
I know that misfortune could happen anywhere but given my own personal experience I’m reluctant to keep anything valuable at home.
Always check the SDB terms. For instance, if at Wells Fargo, you have to agree to not store more than an aggregate value of $10k in the box (a single coin for some of us will trigger that). They have apparently drilled out the locks on ones suspected of significantly exceeding that limit. I don't know how they would suspect.
When they can borrow money at no interest and loan it at 25% interest what do they need with customer service?
🍾🎉 “Post of the day” award goes to…. @cladking ! 😂
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they need someone to collect the interest payments from the customers.
Yes, you can keep gold and silver at a bank. But keep in mind that, according to The New York Times, no federal laws govern safe deposit boxes at banks. Additionally, a bank isn't required to compensate you if your gold or silver is stolen or destroyed while it's in a safe deposit box, the Times reports.Sep 23, 2020
That’s why real property and a high interest savings account that’s FDIC insured are most secure things you can have.
One suggestion I’d have is maybe having the US Mint in the safe deposit box business. After all they have Fort Knox and their own police department. If run well enough, it can also be a source of revenue other than selling numismatic products. If most banks prefer to be out of the safe deposit box business, then I’d rather have the government in it. If something goes wrong with them, it’s the government that gets involved anyways. Those safe deposit box locations can also double up as over the counter sales locations for US Mint products too.
I trust you realize that isn't even close to reality. Net interest margins are a little over 300 basis points (3%) for money center banks.
No thanks. There is nothing to stop them from deciding to search or confiscate what is there. A change in policy, a change in law, and what's yours is suddenly theirs.
Agree. I wouldn't entrust the government with my daily deposit in the commode.
The banks need to make room for the Coffee bars and social areas.