Banking blues

Callistemon
I started using online banking after my two nearest branches shut.
OK???
Know your facts before making silly pronouncements.
I'm as miffed as anyone that they shut but it's 2019.
We have plastic banknotes, High Street rents have gone through the roof in certain areas and I certainly find it more equable to move money around online, set up DDs, cancel payments and scan cheques and dispense with paper bills and statements. I can see and administer my accounts 24/7/365 and don'/t have to trapse to a bank in poor weather or if I am busy.
It's certainly your prerogative to stand in queues and carry round wads of cash.
It would be boring if we all agreed.

I've been banking online for years. We've experienced credit card scams in the past but neither of those cards were attached to our bank and we didn't have online accounts with them, either. Just bad luck, I guess.

The home cheque scanning is good but it doesn't seem to work for commercial cheques, which I get from a company twice a year. Annoying, as I have to trot into the bank with it.

The last time I went into the bank regarding some foreign currency, they suggested I went to the Post Office, as they give a better service! In the end I did that online, as well.

There are no banks and for quite some time there was no PO in my mum's town. She doesn't bank online but manages by getting cashback in the supermarket and with phone calls to her bank.

Unfortunately, going to the branch to pay bills, withdraw cash and have a chat with the staff doesn’t make the bank any money.

Know your facts before making silly pronouncements.
Probably because others were using online banking way before you did!

and carry round wads of cash.
From my illicit earnings

No, usually just a cheque or two from the PB - I know I could get them paid straight into my account but it does give a certain satisfaction to receive a cheque and then pay it into the bank.
They are so lovely in our branch that I'd hate to see them lose their jobs.

At least you always make me GabriellaG, although I know that you annoy other poster.

Keep on posting!!

No-one can use a bank which is closed.
Why would I want to travel, park, pay then stand in a queue to see someone about opening a savings account when I can ring them up and do it over the phone?
Everything about opening any account is available to read online.
Anyway...the world changes and I'm ok with that. I move with the times.
I wonder how many still have a black and white tv set.

other posters (plural)

Black and white photos are so much more classy.

I can use online banking too, I'm not really a dinosaur

You do make me , keep it coming!

I go about once a year. I dont do online banking but have paper statements monthly and telephone banking if i should need it. My bank is 10 miles away too much hassle to find a parking space

Why do some people assume that only their way is the best way? If people want to go to a bank, so be it. Others would rather do everything online, with no human contact at all.

Why do some people assume that only their way is the best way? If people want to go to a bank, so be it. Others would rather do everything online, with no human contact at all.

For one of the "snippiest" people I know on GN to complain about me is a bit rich
GabriellaG54

I often help people with their IT and recently had a call from an elderly couple, one of which is unable to walk and the other also very frail. They are dependent on carers but the nearest bank branch closed last year and the carers are asking to be paid using BACS. I was asked to help set up their online banking. This is something I am not comfortable with and protected myself and them by ensuring that I didn't access any information that was critical to their security.

However, setting up an online banking account is not straightforward and can be confusing. My friends had discarded their PIN, believing they already had one. They didn't understand what the card reader was for and thought that they used the same PIN for the app as the debit card. When the bank sent them a new PIN, they didn't realise they needed to peel off the obfuscated PIN and hold it over a white background to read the PIN. The whole process was fraught with difficulties, including making sure they were able to use text messages on their smartphone (for the bank to let them know a new payee had been set up). It was a salutary lesson for me, I take online banking for granted.

To be fair to my friends, they soon picked up using the online banking app and I had phone call recently from them to proudly tell me they had managed to set up another carer on BACS.

It's easy to be glib about using or not wanting to use online banking. I really was a security 'expert' covering mobile banking security projects. I don't think online banking is any less or more secure than banking the old-fashioned way, but certainly, it is not user friendly to those who have never had the opportunity or the inclination to use information technology. As far as I'm concerned, banks have lost sight of those who need their support the most.

When I came back from abroad thirty years ago to live in a village with no bank (and no car) I went on to telephone banking and have done so ever since finding then very helpful. All bills are Direct Debit. The odd cheque that I get I pay in when I go to town where I also use the ATM for cash.
I don’t have a smart phone.i

Ok sodapop.
Pax
I'm not snippy in real life, I'm a peaceable non-argumentative person ?
Maybe GN brings out the dragon in me ?
Have a good day.

BTW sodapop
Thanks for using my full moniker. Respect. ??

Callistemon
You're so right.
Black and white photos are really classy. Can be moody and much more interesting.
I have one of a street scene in the Peak District at dusk. It shows gleaming pavements and cobbles (setts) and the old fashioned street lamp which gave rise to The Chronicles Of Narnia.
It really is a photo I look at time and again yet it was taken in 2013.

Don’t see what the problem is. People do things their own way.

When one of the banks has a major IT problem
When a smartphone is so expensive to buy and keep going monthly
When security via smartphone is as dodgy as it is
When fraud keeps being hard to prove and people are left to argue, prove it etc etc
When this is no more or even just very rare
I will consider modern ways
Mental well being is not helped by all this remote access and while we keep being told this we keep being pushed into distance contact i fear for those growing up knowing nothing more.

A couple of years ago when I was in the bank I was asked by the cashier if I would consider on line banking. OH is so against it that I explained we wouldn't and she said "I don't blame you. I wouldn't bank on line either."

We opened an account with a large Building Society which had some special deals re foreign exchange etc. The staff were most welcoming.
The next week they shut our branch. The nearest one is more than an hour away.

Moocow

Horse and cart v car
Washing on stones v machine
Swimming across the Atlantic v air travel
Candles v electricity
Morse code v telephone
Need I go on?

Yes GG54 - please go on.... I was rather enjoying the nostalgia of memories from my youth!!

I think that squinting at a little phone trying to do on-line banking etc would give me frown lines and wrinkles.

You can always post a cheque to your bank or building society, their post is securely opened Saggi

GabriellaG54 lol as is the modern term but you do know with your list those are all still options! With the banks closing and having our cash within them, we are no longer being given the option.
because it's pretty [