posted from the daily telegraph... this took place in the village near where we staying.
Villagers strike it rich as they discover cash machine is doubling their money
By Auslan Cramb and Paul Stokes
(Filed: 28/04/2004)
The villagers of Wooler were still wearing broad smiles yesterday as they fondly recalled Golden Wednesday.
It was only seven days ago, but it was "the busiest night in living memory", and they will be talking about it for years to come.
The village's cash machine
It was the night the Barclays Bank cash machine in the Northumberland village paid out twice as much money as every customer asked for.
News travels fast in rural communities and within an hour there was a queue the length of the High Street. One woman arrived at the machine by taxi, in her nightdress and curlers.
If it had happened on the other side of the nearby Scottish border, it may have evoked memories of Whisky Galore, the novel celebrating an incident in the Hebrides in which islanders plundered bottles of whisky after a cargo ship foundered.
The residents of Wooler (pop 2,000) quickly realised they could use all their debit cards in the machine, and that if they asked for £200 they would receive £400.
The place that styles itself as the "Gateway to the Cheviots" was briefly the gateway to free money.
The extraordinary bonanza was caused by the replacement at about 9pm last Wednesday, by staff from Securicor, of a cassette that contained £10 notes with one containing £20 notes.
In the two pubs across the road, the talk was of some locals making "thousands of pounds" from the error.
And it quickly occurred to those who had made a withdrawal that they could return after midnight - the start of a new banking day - and do the same again.
As if queueing for a prize item in the January sales, they began to wait in line once more before midnight.
Within hours the machine had been emptied, and it was estimated in the village yesterday that at least £65,000 had been withdrawn.
The rumour mill suggested pubs had stayed open late to make the most of the windfall but, as in Compton Mackenzie's novel based on the true story of the whisky-laden SS Politician, which ran aground off the Isle of Eriskay in 1941, it was difficult to find anyone who admitted to profiting from the incident.
The landlady of the Angel, who asked not to be named, expressed disappointment that she had not joined in the free-for-all, adding: "If only I could have remembered my PIN number."
She insisted it had not been unusually busy in the pub, although outside it had been "the busiest night in Wooler for years".
"There were people coming from all over the place, from Powburn, Millfield and Lowick. It wasn't just the people from Wooler," she added. "This is a great place for rumours, and it wasn't long before everybody knew about it.
"Some people didn't go because they thought they would get into trouble, or would have to hand the money back, and I heard that someone went into the bank the next day and handed over the extra money she got." Next door at the Black Bull, there was astonishment yesterday at the news that Barclays would not be asking customers to return their bonus payments.
A spokesman for the bank said it was a "third-party error" and blamed Securicor staff for putting the wrong cassette into the machine.
He said: "We know who took money out of the ATM, but can't pinpoint which ones have had too much money so we won't be asking for the money back. From our perspective, we are covered for any losses because it was a mistake by Securicor."
Securicor, however, blamed the cash handling company, Securitas Cash Management, for giving it a cassette with the wrong notes.
It said in a statement: "Having conducted a full investigation, Securicor Cash Services can state categorically that it was not responsible for this malfunction.
"The cassette was picked up from a Securitas Cash Management cash point, and Securitas was responsible for the loading and sealing of the cassette."
Securitas - which is part-owned by Barclays - was not available for comment but a spokesman for Barclays later confirmed that "this very rare error" occurred where the cassette was filled.
"Our policy is that we will get back to whoever caused the error in the first place and ask them to compensate us for the loss," he said.
Whoever was to blame, the general view in Wooler was that "the banks rob you blind anyway, this is just small change to them but a lot money to us".
Malcolm Tully, a shopkeeper who was in the Angel at lunchtime, confessed he was about to go on holiday to Majorca, but not on the proceeds of the bank's mistake.
"I wasn't there on the night, but I wish I had been," he said. "I would have been in the queue with the rest of them. A lot of people made quite a lot of money, and they didn't have to get into boats and pull crates of whisky out of the sea to do it."
