So, what is safe?
So, I was trying to sell my beloved Honda which I had owned for only 16 - 17 months in favor of getting a brand new fully loaded BMW. I couldn't be more excited.
After talking to some prospective buyers, I closed the deal with this nice couple from a small town in North California. I have been in the US for less than 2 years, and I haven't really sold anything yet, so I did a full online research on selling cars in the US. To my surprise, I read some horror stories about people getting scammed and found that everybody preferred to get cash instead. As my buyer said they will get cashier check, I got the bank details of the issuing bank and decided to meet at a local branch of that bank (Umpqua Bank) in San Jose. My plan was to sign the papers, encash the cashier’s check, hand off the car to the buyer and then deposit the cash to a nearby Bank of America branch where I have my checking account.
We met as planned, I got the cashier check which I promptly encashed and I handed off my car. The lady at the umpqua bank gave me all the cash in a small bag which I put in my backpack. My buyer walked with me to my bank where I was going to be depositing cash, just to provide more security. We reached BofA and I stood in the line waiting for the cashier waving good bye to my buyer.
My turn came, I handed over the bag containing the cash to the teller, feeling happy about how smoothly everything had gone so far. The teller took the money out of the bag and started to put the money in the counting machine. While the machine was counting, it rejected one $100 bill which he promptly took out. After having counted and verifying all other bills, he put that bill back in the machine but the machine rejected it again. He tried with few other nearby machines, but all of them kept rejecting it. And then he looked at me and told me that it was counterfeit bill, and that he would have to seize it and report it to the department of treasury/secret services.
I was shocked. I told him that I had just got him from another bank to which he said they were not sure about the machines the other bank used. He gave me a copy of the report and the bill. I immediately walked back to the umpqua bank and told them about the incident and showed them the copy of the report. Now was the time for another surprise - the manager looked at the report, and told me that they can't do anything about it since I walked out of their branch with cash. They were polite, but they flatly refused any association with that bill.
I was overwhelmed with the entire situation, there was a loss of $100 and then there was a secret service report (I am not a US citizen, I am here on a work visa and it all seemed like a big deal to me). I didn’t know what to do next, so I came back home.
The next working day, I called up Umpqua Bank customer care and told them about the incident and they suggested to file a complaint against the branch, which I did by sending an email. They game me a little hope that I might get my $100 back, but after one week, he got back to me repeating the same story - that there is nothing they can do as I walked out with cash.
I am at a loss here - you can't trust a personal check, you can't trust a cashier check, you can't trust cash from stranger, and now you can't even trust cash from bank? Am I supposed to verify every single bill I get from bank?