Banks Passing Their Customers On To The Post Office

money-4-nothing

I work in an really busy Post Office and it's the only one in town and as you may know we offer personal banking for quite a few different banks. A&L and CoOP/Smile for example - people can deposit money instantly into their accounts. Most banks allow cash withdrawls and balance checks only.

Anyway few weeks ago I began to notice a heck of alot of Abbey and Nationwide customers spending upwards of 20 minutes queueing to take money out over our counters.

I asked this one woman if the bank was shut and she was told by Abbey to come here because they wouldn't serve her. Turns out they only serve you if you want to take more then £300 out.

I think this is wrong on so many levels, passing your customers onto somebody else.

But because of all this we get a heck of alot of people coming into us thinking we have access to their accounts and can sort out banking problems for them. For example I served a woman who wanted to cancel a direct debit on her barclays account one saturday afternoon.

icefall

Sounds peculiar.

ShelfStacker_3

Hold on - they won't serve people at their counters, so why aren't they referring them to an ATM, rather than the Post Office?! That's just weird.

We get lots of Halifax/A&L/Abbey customers at our counters too, for paying bills. It's a nuisance, because all four refer people to us to do things they can't do, but don't mention that we charge a fiver to do so. There's a rant here on how people can be so stubborn as to still want to pay cash for everything, but hey...

money-4-nothing

Banks also pass customers onto us when it comes to bills, even bills which NEED to be paid at a BANK because it needs to be done via BACS payment.

We can take A&L Transcash Giro Slips, which then get sent off to GiroBank... But Can't take the ones which need to be paid into a Bank Account via a 8digit account number and 6 digit sort code.

99% of the bills which get paid like this, we charge £2.35. Which most customers demand to know WHY theres a charge.

Errrrr.... Because Scrooge and Son Debt Collection Ltd don't pay Post Office Limited anything so we have to charge for collecting payment, processing payment and sending payment to that Company.

The only companies i've come across that use Girobank Transcash, who we dont charge are Inland Revenue & Customs, T-Mobile and the odd catalogue company.... who all must have a special relationalship with the Post Office. Everything else is done via our AP (Automatic Payment Service) Service like your council tax, gas & electric bills, bt phone bills, rent cards, mobile top ups. Which I believe earns PO LTD 15p per transaction.

Banks seem that they dont want to deal with their customers.

Extant

Well, that's just silly.

Why pay cashiers if they're not going to, you know, cashier?

oxenryd

Aren't these just basic accounts though ?

I know what you mean ShelfStacker, Abbey always refer you to elsewhere for bills cause "they don't do giro"

ShelfStacker_3

money-4-nothing wrote: »

Banks seem that they dont want to deal with their customers.

I don't honestly blame them, at least on this front. Bank Giro Credits are a pain in the !!!! for all concerned, quite frankly, and the day they're no longer available will be a happy one indeed. They take ages, cost everyone concerned with the b*stard things more money to process and are ridiculously fiddly - plus, if there's a problem with one, it can take ages to sort out.

I would also say that going to a cashier for a small sum of money, when you could get the same cash out of an ATM far more easily, is absurd - which is probably what the banks you mentioned are doing. Presumably they are referring customers to you because "they want a person", which the PO will give them. The silly woman queuing at the post office for 20 minutes is, in my mind, just that; silly. But then, that's just me.

FWIW, we take HMRC, DWP and child support payments without charge. Any other bills - if the person named on the bill isn't a customer, there's a £5 charge. Which inevitably leads to us having to deal with sweary, p*ssed off Halifax customers who have just been rudely awakened as to why their bank can pay them eleventybillion percent interest each second - because they won't do things that (at present) are fairly basic banking functions.

brightonman123

setup may have changed since i dealty with giroank (now A&L)- their nine digit a/c number always caused problems, as their main sort code code 72 00 00 changed, according to the regional centre that looked after an account.

first digit of a/c usually became part of the sort code- so a/c 123456789
in proper format would be 72 00 01 / 23456789..

Extant

ShelfStacker wrote: »

I don't honestly blame them, at least on this front. Bank Giro Credits are a pain in the !!!! for all concerned, quite frankly, and the day they're no longer available will be a happy one indeed. They take ages, cost everyone concerned with the b*stard things more money to process and are ridiculously fiddly - plus, if there's a problem with one, it can take ages to sort out.

The lack of any standardization is the real kick in the teeth. There's the two digit transcodes, but every different bank seems to have their own definition of what each one means. So some 73s have account numbers, some don't... and good luck finding it if it goes wrong. Transcode 91 puts the sort code as part of the account number - but say bye bye to that money if the OCR software reads the MICR line wrong - because you're not going to see it for 6 months at least.

If everyone just settled on direct debit, card payments or sortcode/account/reference, financial losses would be down by millions. Then maybe we'd pay more interest...

I would also say that going to a cashier for a small sum of money, when you could get the same cash out of an ATM far more easily, is absurd - which is probably what the banks you mentioned are doing. Presumably they are referring customers to you because "they want a person", which the PO will give them. The silly woman queuing at the post office for 20 minutes is, in my mind, just that; silly. But then, that's just me.

It's not just you - it really is silly. My branch was one of the first in the country to get the Barclays brand kiosks (the Wincor Nixdorf account servicing things, they're the same as yours I think). We had two put in and six months later, we still had people who would come in on a Saturday without an appointment and wait up to two hours to see someone to cancel a direct debit and look at their entries. Rather than use the machine.

Personally, I could think of much better things to do with my Saturday.

FWIW, we take HMRC, DWP and child support payments without charge. Any other bills - if the person named on the bill isn't a customer, there's a £5 charge. Which inevitably leads to us having to deal with sweary, p*ssed off Halifax customers who have just been rudely awakened as to why their bank can pay them eleventybillion percent interest each second - because they won't do things that (at present) are fairly basic banking functions.

Do you take HSBC BGCs with cash if they're not an account holder? The real problem is people who insist on printing "pay this at any UK bank" on their BGCs.

bristolleedsfan

[quote=ShelfStacker;
I would also say that going to a cashier for a small sum of money, when you could get the same cash out of an ATM far more easily, is absurd - .[/quote]

A lot of people dont feel safe drawing money out of an ATM especially if the ATM is located outside.

As for people who go to a Post Office to pay in and withdraw money, I would assume that the PO is both contracted for this and gets paid for providing this service. Id have thought Post Offices would be keen for as much business as possible in the current climate.

1jim

I think Bristol is bang on with this, the post office bangs on and on about the counter services it provides and trys to get people in to use the counter services, only to be met by staff who do not seem to value customers when they do come in

In this day and age the Post Office branches need to draw in as many customers as possible.....there is no point moaning and setting up a petition to keep a post office open if people do not use it. Imagine the customer experience- you want to take some cash out of your account- the terms of your account mean that you can only take it out of a branch if you want more than £300, you decide to use the Post Office (which you are allowed to do and think that your transaction may help support your post office as presumably the post office is paid for these) only to be met with staff who question why you are daring to use the post office. In this instance I would have taken my money and then started to use a different post office- or more likly- started to do all other transactions another way- car tax (on line/telephone), bills (on-line/telephone banking), banking-paying in and withdrawls (atm), pensions/benefits (direct debit to none post office account), stamps (from another shop or via the royal mail website using the smart stamp). Now how many customers doing all of this would it take to close a struggling branch

I used to use a local post office to post a lot of ebay parcels (had completed all details in advance, got my proof of postings ready to be stamped etc) I went at quiet times of the day etc and was made to feel by the staff that this was all to much work for them, I started to use another post office a little further away, now nothing would have been too much trouble for them, they actually valued my custom. A year or two later which one is left open??