NY1 For You: Manhattan Student Struggles With Bank After Debit Card Theft

By: Susan Jhun

To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.

Then come back here and refresh the page.

A stolen ATM card and over $1,000 lost left a Manhattan student overseas questioning the customer service of a major New York bank until NY1 For You stepped in. NY1’s Susan Jhun filed the following NY1 For You report.

Morris Sandler says he was “aghast” when he found out that thieves went on a 24-hour spending spree with his daughter's debit card after it was eaten by an ATM machine while she was interning in Paris.

“$1,900 of it had disappeared,” says Sandler.

Sandler's daughter called her bank, TD Bank in New York, the night she lost her card to have it suspended. She cancelled it the very next day when she couldn't retrieve her card.

However, when Sandler's daughter filed a claim with TD Bank to get her money back, she was told by the bank they had no record of her suspending her card. So Sandler submitted a copy of his daughter's telephone bill proving she called TD Bank on the day her card was taken. He also supplied the police report his daughter filed after she realized the card was stolen.

Still, TD Bank refused to credit her account.

“A senior, senior supervisor wrote me back and says we're not opening the file. There's no new information,” says Sandler.

That's when Sandler called NY1 For You, and NY1 contacted TD Bank.

A day later, after a year of refusing to credit her account, TD Bank reversed its decision and gave Sandler's daughter all the money she lost.

“After you called them? No question. After 11 months, 14 letters, numerous calls, you did it in two hours,” says Sandler.

It’s the end to an exhausting exchange.