Banks Passing Their Customers On To The Post Office

RayWolfe

dunstonh wrote: »

cash the cheque, give a chunk to the wife, a bit of hows your father if they were lucky and then down the pub

Not in the branch, surely?

LongTermLurker

Mrs_Ryan wrote: »

Hmmm... interesting discussion!

When I switched accounts from NatWest to A&L, NatWest threw their toys out of the pram a bit.

'You cant pay your bills over the counter there.' the man said triumphantly.

'So?' says I. 'The only bill I have is paid by DD. Doesnt make any difference.' I said. 'Yes, but you cant pay your gas, electricity, phone bill, TV licence over the counter there.' he continued. 'Thats fine, because I dont pay em - my partner pays them DD from his own current account.' said I.

lol, "our bank is better because we give you functionality you don't need" :rotfl:

LongTermLurker

RayWolfe wrote: »

Not in the branch, surely?

Not then, it was only later that the banks started getting that desperate for business

Mrs_Ryan

LongTermLurker wrote: »

lol, "our bank is better because we give you functionality you don't need" :rotfl:

Spot on LTL :rotfl:

They also gave me a rubbish Solo card and refused to upgrade it... they couldnt understand why I might want a full Visa Debit instead :rotfl:

PROLIANT

Ah, the good old British way of life, queue for 20mins to draw out their £22.95 life savings, fill in countless amounts of paper....what a waste and feel mighty important with their fake-gold embossed bank book, off we go to the post office and glare at the "everything’s a pound-shop" style tat on the counter, wait in another queue for another 20 mins for that 1st class stamp, hang around outside of the shop door way blocking access for everybody else ranting on about how it was back in the day, took 6 weeks to replace a light bulb after we got a decision back from the union, oh those were the days......STOP IT YOUR KILLING ME!!!!!!

Anyway, enough of the pish taking, glad to see evolution is taking its course, get rid of the counter service or strip it down so bare that it would only require 1 part-time person involved, penalise customers for not using the electronic services that millions of pounds of tax payers money was invested in developing, educate the elderly on self-service machines....get the local authority road maintenance division to create a segregated lane for them so the are not so easy to trip over and continually cut in front of others!
Educate people on change and how do adapt, it is human nature to adapt to a new environment and accept change....the only obstacle is stubbornness and ignorance, keep a small number of post offices open more so in rural areas and have at least on per main town and city, but please, please insist on more self service machines.

Extant

dunstonh wrote: »

Banking was actually fun in those days. It was the last days of every job having a grade and everyone knew their position. However, you didnt have sales targets and training on the job meant simple jobs like cheque book clerk, direct debit clerk etc got 3 weeks of doubled up training per person to learn the insides and out of every role. You were paid on your ability to do clerical jobs and quality service. Not how much you sold.

OMG, I am turning into a grumpy old man early.

...eww.

And I have a grade. B7. But all of the old opening clerks, closing clerks, securities clerks? Waste of money.

dunstonh

It certainly wasnt perfect back then. Some staff members used to think they could boss people around just because they were one grade higher or joined 2 weeks before you did. However, those that I am still on contact with that still work at the bank all complain that they working environment was so much better then. Although they put it more down to the centralisation of jobs and the removal of skills from many of the positions from having people that knew the job well to having more people that knew a little but not a lot. A lot of the staff dont seem to have the pride in their job that there used to be. Although that could apply to so many different occupations nowadays.

The problem was it was over the top back then but it has gone too far the other way now. They ought to have found a bit in between that retained skills and service with a sales focus but without the extensive hierarchy.

LongTermLurker

PROLIANT wrote: »

Ah, the good old British way of life, queue for 20mins to draw out their £22.95 life savings, fill in countless amounts of paper....what a waste and feel mighty important with their fake-gold embossed bank book, off we go to the post office and glare at the "everything’s a pound-shop" style tat on the counter, wait in another queue for another 20 mins for that 1st class stamp, hang around outside of the shop door way blocking access for everybody else ranting on about how it was back in the day, took 6 weeks to replace a light bulb after we got a decision back from the union, oh those were the days......STOP IT YOUR KILLING ME!!!!!!

Anyway, enough of the pish taking, glad to see evolution is taking its course, get rid of the counter service or strip it down so bare that it would only require 1 part-time person involved, penalise customers for not using the electronic services that millions of pounds of tax payers money was invested in developing, educate the elderly on self-service machines....get the local authority road maintenance division to create a segregated lane for them so the are not so easy to trip over and continually cut in front of others!
Educate people on change and how do adapt, it is human nature to adapt to a new environment and accept change....the only obstacle is stubbornness and ignorance, keep a small number of post offices open more so in rural areas and have at least on per main town and city, but please, please insist on more self service machines.

Seems odd someone from your neck of the woods advocating redundancies, Pro

I'm not that old, but strangely I've never used the post office so much as since I started using this website - all these accounts require an inordinate amount of snailmail, which in turn requires queuing. Take away a local post office and you take away any benefit of this site - if I had to traipse into town to open up a new account I wouldn't bother. Even in the most modern of societies, cash is required and if I can get that from a PO counter, employ a person to serve me and avoid having to go miles out of my way to find a cash machine, then isn't that a logical way of thinking?

There's two threads going on in one here - insisting on paying bills via a counter (agreed, unnecessary) and using a PO counter (where there isn't a bank's cash machine) because it's convenient to do so. I've no problems with the latter as it's environmentally sound and may help keep someone in a job & maintain a post office/corner shop/paperboy's pocket money. If a PO worker is employed to serve people between 9 and 5 (or whatever) then they've no reason to complain just because someone's asking them to work.

PROLIANT

I was thinking more "internal re-organisation" rather than redundancies, you would still need customer service advisors to assist if their was a problem with a machine, provide PC's for free online access to internet banking, I think this will be the way forward for the future....dragging the luddites kicking and screaming.

rb10

Mrs_Ryan wrote: »

Spot on LTL :rotfl:

[quote=LongTermLurker ] lol, "our bank is better because we give you functionality you don't need" :rotfl:

They also gave me a rubbish Solo card and refused to upgrade it... they couldnt understand why I might want a full Visa Debit instead :rotfl:[/quote]

So it should be "our bank is better because we give you functionality you don't need, even though we don't give you functionality you do need"!!