But all is not lost. In terms of standard banking practice, any branch of your bank should be able to replace the note for you, provided that certain conditions are met.

Soiled notes

For example, First National Bank’s procedure for dealing with soiled notes states that: "Soiled notes are notes of poor quality, but still of full size. Soiled notes could include notes repaired with sellotape or notes of full value and restored to full size by pasting it onto a piece of white paper.

Bank tellers may also refund the full value to a customer if the note presented is at least two thirds (66 percent) of the original size, plus has one full serial number and a minimum of three digits of the second number."

Now this last point is quite important, and could be the tricky part. If, say, you have a bill with a whole number torn off (even if that leaves 80 percent of the note), the bank will only refund half the value of the note.

In other words, if someone else has just a corner of the note with the whole number he will also get 50 percent of its value. This is a bit of an irritation if you have received a damaged R100 note from an ATM machine. Most of the notes are processed automatically by equipment not quite clever enough to catch any currency with one of the corners missing, which could be just enough for a whole number. You may not even notice that the note is damaged until later on when you try to pay for your shopping.

How to prove it

Proving where you got the note and the circumstances is hard enough, but the banks’ unhelpful practice just makes matters worse because they will only give you R50 for that damaged R100 note.

If this happens to you, perhaps jumping up and down at your branch might help. There's no harm in trying a bit of hysteria to sway banking practice!

It certainly seems logical that if the note carries one full number plus three digits from the second number, it is counted as full value (thus preventing any hanky panky of two clients getting R100 each from one note), but it would be more helpful if banks accepted just one number provided the note exceeded, say, 55 percent of the size of a normal note.

That way, only one person would still receive full value, because the other person could only have 45 percent of the note. It is unlikely that counting machines could possibly count less than half of the note as one bill, so it would be rejected and that would solve the ATM problem too.

Adapted from an article by Nigel Benetton, www.insurancetimes.net

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