Bank Asks: Why do you want your money?

georgiadewolf

I've got a fantastic one for this... I opened a Bradford and Bingley account before uni and decided to close it after uni, having accumulated £2000 (including the whole shares thing). I loved their service and only closed the account because it couldn't be accessed online which was a major disadvantage for me.

Now, I'm deaf, so when I go into a bank I can either write a note and slide it across the counter (which tends to cause some alarm!) or get my friend to say " This is.... she's deaf, I'm speaking for her and she wants to.... etc". This worked fine for years as I was smiling and nodding along to my friend's speech but on the day I closed my account my friend had just come out of hospital for a minor eye operation, and I'd fallen over mountain biking so had two black eyes....

So we were standing there, him leaning heavily; squinting on me and sounding stressed "We want to withdraw all the money and close the account!" Hur hur. The cashier didn't seem bothered; I didn't know whether to be glad or not because we really did look seriously dodgy and I half wanted them to accuse him of holding me hostage!

I do have to say LTSB have been great with my deafness and if I go into the branch they do whatever phone calls I need.

sarymclary

Well, I went in to LTSB today to withdraw some money to buy a bike to sell later in the year (hopefully for a vast profit!), and I was ready and poised for the question - this time I was going to tell them that I was buying a baby from overseas - and the cashier just politely handed my money over without saying much at all! How disappointed was I?

Incidentally, one of you reminded me of my phone conversation 2 weeks go with LTSB's loan dept., who I asked for an early redemption figure, and clarification about paying my loan off early. The guy asked why I wanted to pay it off early. Now, call me old fashioned (I won't be offended, really) but wasn't that a bit of a dumb question from someone working in finance? Anyway, after a pause, whereby I collected my thoughts and didn't utter out loud 'are you completely stupid, or what?', I answered simply 'because I can'!!

These people don't exactly install a great deal of faith in you with the fact that they're looking after a fair bit of your money, do they?

Thanks for all the replies guys, I felt confident enough to have stuck to my guns today, and if necessary would have complained about intrusion, etc. if they'd asked again. Ah, if only they'd asked....:D

gelato_cat

I've been with the Halifax for 18 years and racked up a fair bit in savings. Last year I decided to take £25k out and save it with Icesave instead.

So I went into the branch and asked to close the account. The guy asked me no questions about why - just closed the account for me. He was about to print a cheque (ie was assuming I wanted to take the money out of the bank completely) until I said I wanted the balance paid into my Halifax current account!

I was quite surprised - I thought they'd at least do some "exit" questioning to find out why they're losing custom, but I spose this is Halifax we're talking about. Not really the most customer-focused bank.

Suze

sarymclary wrote:

I was wondering, having withdrawn a small lump sum of money a few months ago, I was intrigued when asked by the cashier 'why do you want this money, what are you going to use it for?'.