North Texas Bank Teller Refuses Cash Deposit Over COVID-19 Concerns
CORINTH, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) - Nearly two years into the pandemic there is still fear and a lot of confusion about how you can catch COVID-19.
That was highlighted by an incident at a bank in Corinth on Thursday, Jan. 6 when a customer says a teller refused to accept his cash deposit.
Rick Reid pulled into the drive-through of a Wells Fargo branch in Corinth to pay his mortgage.
He had $1,000 in cash he planned to deposit.
He says he told the teller through the intercom that his wife was at home sick with COVID-19 and he needed to put money in her account.
"She realized it was cash, she sent it back, said she was pregnant and was unwilling to do the transaction and told me to leave," says Reid. "I said I have an account here I have a mortgage I need to pay."
Reid says he tested negative but chose to use the drive through out of an abundance of caution.
"Where is the sign that says 'don't bring us cash if you've tested positive for COVID'? Where is the protocol and information that you people should share with us? So yeah I am upset," he said.
Reid was able to eventually make the deposit through another teller after he was initially denied.
Wells Fargo provided the following statement to CBS 11 on the matter:
We apologize for the inconvenience our customers experienced. We are reviewing our COVID protocols with our bankers at this location to ensure they are followed correctly. Throughout the COVID pandemic, the health and safety of our customers and employees have been critically important and that continues. Our bankers have been and will be here to serve the needs of our customers and communities during these challenging times.
The incident is an example of the uncertainty many people still feel nearly two years into the pandemic.
Doctors we spoke say that while COVID-19 can survive on some surfaces for a short time, you are more likely to get the virus from fresh respiratory droplets directly from another person.
"If you touch a big glob of mucous and then you touch your mouth or your eye or something like that, that would possible to spread it that way, but in the absence of something like that, touching materials that other people have touched is really not risky," says Dr. Beth Kassanof-Piper, Dallas County Medical Society Immediate Past President.