Banking

[Old_Geezer]

Thought I'd pass this information on. Maybe everyone else already knows, maybe they don't care, but :

Over the Xmas break I had a need to visit a bank to both pay a bill, and pay in a few cheques too. I had one of the staff assume I was an idiot and insisted she showed me the way to pay in cheques at the ATM. As if I couldn't do such a thing for myself were I foolish enough to want to. She said she was sure I would be pleased with it even though I insisted it can not stamp my cheque (or paying in book) so there was no chance I'd be pleased with it. But I allow myself to get pushed around too much so let her do her thing.

After a few goes (the cheques were too pristine to be recognised until crumpled apparently) the cheques were finally accepted, and she presented me with this damned till receipt which I now have to ensure I don't lose, when doing the job the proper way would have ensured a counterfoil in my cheque book which was very unlikely to be lost. Clearly an inferior method, much less convenient. Another drop in service it seems, which is all too common, day after day after day, these days.

But the one incident aside, after all I had just been proved right, the staff had proved she had no idea, and I could ensure I don't let them show me that an inferior lack of service is not something to be pleased with on any future occasion. But for one thing she said.

She said that all banks were doing away with paying in slips in the future and words to the effect of so I'd just have to lump it because clearly as customers, the public are just dregs to be pushed around as the almighty banks see fit. I'm sure she put a better spin on it, but that was the gist. Blow you unimportant lot, you'll just have to put up with it because we all connive to act as a group to do what suits us, not you.

It took a huge fuss to stop them doing away with cheque books. Is there no campaign to stop this secondary attack on the public's banking services also ?

[Peter Pedant]

// If, like me, you probably pay nothing to have a bank account. //

nope Old G does
he could use his money to invest and get a return
and foregoes this and puts it into a current account

the bank then uses his money to invest ....

so he has lost something called an opportunity cost

as for paying a bank to keep your money and invest it for themselves
o god VHG - what did they call you at skool - " Dopey" ?

[Peter Pedant]

sorry I meant Einstein

[cactusdriver]

I haven't been in a bank branch in donkeys' years, doing all my transactions online. On the rare occasions that I need to pay in a cheque I put it in a sealed envelope supplied by the bank together with a pay slip and hand it in at the post office The cashier logs the transaction on their computer and gives me a receipt.

[chrissa1]

Me too, cactusdriver.

[Peter Pedant]

thx cacty
I wondered how devotees of internet banking paid in cheques

having been cloned ( actually more than once ) I dont go near the internet for banking

[Jackdaw33]

Speak as you find. Although suspicious by nature the only problems with IB I have met is that someetimes

[Old_Geezer]

Too tired to read through until tomorrow, but just to say that the bank not only invests my money for their own benefit, they are legally allowed to loan out multiple amounts of what is deposited with them which they then make a profit on. Effectively creating money to get a multiple return on. I don't think they can scream lack of affordability.

[ToraToraTora]

you visited a bank? cheques? paying in slips? You on the electric yet? There won't even be a bank branch before long. Why do you need to keep the receipt, the transaction will be on your account. It's all electronic anyway, the paper is only for the luddites.

[ToraToraTora]

I just don't get why it's necessary to go to a branch anyway. On the rare occasions I need to pay in I use the post office, they take cash and cheques for most banks. I haven't seen a cheque for years. Everything else is automatic. Stop wasting time on paranoia OG and get with the system, it's coming like it or not.

[jno]

what could possibly be risky about online banking?

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/over-a-quarter-of-the-encrypted-web-is-about-to-be-broken

[ToraToraTora]

maybe so jno but that's everyone, even those who think they are not effected like OG. All our transactions are electronic, not using internet banking etc just means not being hooked up yourself, does not effect the system.

[Svejk]

Come on, Jackdaw. You've got me intrigued now.

[Svejk]

And Peter Ped, don't know why or how you get away with being so rude to people.
I'm sure VHG is as aware as everyone else how banks operate without your supercilious advice and gratuitous insults.

[Svejk]

And Peter Ped, don't know why or how you get away with being so rude to people.
I'm sure VHG is as aware as everyone else how banks operate without your supercilious advice and gratuitous insults.

[Svejk]

And Peter Ped, don't know why or how you get away with being so rude to people.
I'm sure VHG is as aware as everyone else how banks operate without your supercilious advice and gratuitous insults.

[Jackdaw33]

...pressed submit too soon. Just wanted to say it's sometimes difficult to get logged on in the fist place.

[Mosaic]

Lol at Svejk, telling someone off for bad manners!
I love the irony!
I use t'interweb for banking and shopping but a very good point is made by OG and others who prefer not to ie ledgers do not crash.
And OG's point about his preferred method being simple and foolproof is one that banks should respect.
In reply to PP's query about tallies, the marks on sticks and knots in yarn that represented accounts, these died out in government usage as literacy spread. So say by the 1500s in England. But the system was still used informally in pubs and shops for customer credit, and 'the tally man' was a well known figure up to about 1910-1914, selling goods on credit door to door.

[Svejk]

I only seem rude to half-wits.

[Cloverjo]

Just a few years ago, I paid in some money to my Lloyd's account. I didn't know at the time that they had stopped giving receipts, unless they're asked for, in order to "save time for everyone". The guy behind the counter could have paid it into his own account for I knew; I had no proof I'd deposited the money. I always ask for a receipt now if I need to pay in at the bank.

[Old_Geezer]

Why do we always get sneering about electronic methods being available ? That gives you nothing (except an easily losable machine generated till receipt it seems) in your hand to file to indicate/prove what occurred. Figures on a screen can change and you have nothing to show. It makes no sense to rely entirely on such a system.

This is about corporations, banks in this case, just interested in their bottom line and saying what can we claim is the new way of doing something that some will swallow as a necessity, which enables us not to provide the service we should ?

It's not an inevitability unless everyone simply accepts it. We still have chequebooks. Paper records stamped by the company is the best system and should not be destroyed simply to increase shareholders' and bankowners' wealth at the expense of us being treated adequately.