Banking rant

[king_pellinor]

I went to town today to pay in a load of cheques and cash left over from Summerfest.  I ought really to have paid them in before now, but the weekend after Summerfest I was too tired, last weekend I went to the bank in Cowes to find it shut, and today went to Newport and go the job done.

No thanks to HSBC, though, they're rubbish.  Their main Island branch on Saturdays consists of at least 3 staff, but no tellers - everything has to be done by machine.  Of the three, one hid behind a locked door, only nipping out briefly to do nothing very discernable, and another stayed in an interview room fiddling on a PC and not interacting with anyone, while the third had to cope with the large crowds of people milling about - because with no cash desk open, there is no obvious palce to queue so no-one can tell who's waiting for help and who of those is ahead of who.  They can't take coins, as the chappie cheerfully told me after I'd been waiting for 10 minutes to talk to him.  Their cash machine couldn't cope with being given notes, and the cheque machine couldn't cope with the cheques, or at least not until the 7th attempt when it decided they were OK after all.

So I nipped round the corner to Lloyds who had 3 tellers on They happily counted all the coins and notes, pointed out that I was 10p short, took the extra 10p, and stuck it all in my personal account whence it can be transferred across to HSBC at leisure.  Absolutely spot on.

Comments

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

HSBC's larger branches in particular are possessed by a drive for dehumanisation. In their ideal world, one suspects the staff would be androids, and they'd still ignore you. Smaller branches like Kidlington and Summertown are preferred by me to the Cornmarket main branch in Oxford.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

When First Direct was still going I noticed that HSBC was getting odd about having customers and staff in the same room, and that cashiers were an endangered species. I'm glad that when they wanted me to pay to have the account I emptied it out and shut it down. They sound utterly shite.

Admittedly HSBC being that way may explain why the much larger NatWest across the square had quesue of people to the door despite having 4-5 cashiers on (admittedly they had 8 or 9 windows but that's a whole other rant).

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I wish I could say I am surprised about this.

I use banks' counter services far less than I used to. However, I know that banks have come under intense pressure to cut costs in recent years, and are probably doing this (in part) by (a) not emplying front line staff, (b) not employing competent front line staff, and (c) not maintaining machinery.