Bothered and Bewildered! !

HSBC is our bank too. DH regularly changes a £10 note for pound coins for the parking payment machines in the town centre. When he went in this week all the counters had been closed down. We do use our contactless cards for most things but have always used coins for parking so it looks as if we will have to change to cards for parking.

I dont think that coins will be used for parking for much longer to be honest. I would guess most people pay by phone

Which still leaves the Big Issue seller, the charity collection box, the poppy seller, the £6 for my weekly dance class (cash only), several small traders I know who don’t accept cards, the supermarket trolley, and tips, which I still prefer to leave as cash. And the grandsons’ money boxes - they don’t take cards yet.

We get our cash out at the local post office, and ask for £20 in £1 coins every time, so that we always have a few handy.

I went into my nearest branch and enquired if they dealt with bullion. The cashier didn't even know what the word meant!

Visited a local beauty spot with friends in three cars. The car park machine had been changed to a pay by phone machine. None of us, on various networks, had phone reception!

(And I wouldn't have known how to do it anyway as you needed to have downloaded an appropriate App)

I pay my gardener cash, I pay cash if I buy a pint of milk or if my friend gets me something from the supermarket. The hairdressers only take cash. The dog training class take cash only. The public toilets are 50p. I don’t want to put the bank’s app on my phone and it is such an old phone it probably wouldn’t work

Also there is the problem of how expensive it is to take credit cards - we have stopped and customers can pay via PayPal or bank transfer. Can’t believe a beggar has a card machine.

AmberSpyglass. Staff don't always have to follow the rules. I think that they sometimes make them up to save themselves work. I recently bagged up the proceeds of a charity event I had run. All correctly counted into the appropriate plastic money bags, and I went to the bank to deposit the proceeds before transferring it to the charity.
The clerk told me that they were not allowed to take such a large amount, and I would have to bring it in in batches. I firmly stated that the bank was earning interest on my cash, that I was 82, and that I had better things to do than travel back and forth to the bank.
She took the bag of cash, weighed each item, and paid it into my account without another word.
Most people need cash for various reasons, even if it's just to give the children a few bob for some sweets. How dare the banks dictate to us how to handle our own money. They are our servants, not our masters, and something should be done about it.

Your servants? Really. God, the entitlement on this thread is foul. And people say the younger generation is the problem!

I’ve given up asking the bank to issue coins you have to go to a post office. They are usually happy to do this. My local bank ( who had lovely helpful staff) closed two years ago nearest branch now 30 mins drove away. The local staff were so sad their branch was closing , they hadn’t even been consulted

Drive sorry

We were "consulted" before our branch closed in June. It made no difference at all. Even the ATM has gone.
The staff were great. They were sad to be closing. Some were redeployed.
When DH died a year ago the bank staff were so kind and calmly talked me through all the things I had to do.
I pity anyone who has to talk to a person on a phone or worse, a robot.

The Hong Kong and Shanghai bank refused to give my mum some cash this year. The cashier told her that she didn’t believe the reason mum gave for wanting cash!!!
My mum is old but has all her wits about her.
She was so upset she left without her cash.
We urged her to change banks but she sees that option as too much bother.

I'm with Hetty58 and AmberSpyglass on this. What do you need cash for? In any case there are still plenty ATMs around, then use your £20 to buy a newspaper and you've got enough change to do you for weeks. I've still got notes in my purse that I took out of the ATM just before the first lockdown.

The Big Issue seller will already take online payment.

Its the future, ladies...

The people in the bank are offering a service to paying customers, but at present some of the banks and their staff are forgetting it.

And they get to dictate which service they provide.

eazybee

The people in the bank are offering a service to paying customers, but at present some of the banks and their staff are forgetting it.

The people in the bank are employees of a big business whose objective is to make profit, and for whom handing over £5 of change is not really in their business plan.

The customer is an inconvenience but a cash cow - remember all the misselling scandals?
Those who struggle with debt are subjected to high charges, sinking further into debt.

The Big Issue seller will already take online payment

Yours may, none do round here.

Maggiemaybe

^The Big Issue seller will already take online payment^

Yours may, none do round here.

That's not me in the picture ?

newsroom.uk.paypal-corp.com/2021-05-10-The-Big-Issue-accelerates-move-to-cashless-payments-as-vendors-armed-with-contactless-technology-see-30-percent-increase-in-sales

PamelaJ1

The Hong Kong and Shanghai bank refused to give my mum some cash this year. The cashier told her that she didn’t believe the reason mum gave for wanting cash!!!
My mum is old but has all her wits about her.
She was so upset she left without her cash.
We urged her to change banks but she sees that option as too much bother.

OTOH…..
It was a few years ago, but there was a TV programme about scams, where a woman who’d sent all her savings to some scam artist who was ‘in love’ with her, then wanted a £10k bank loan to send to him, as well.

The bank asked what she wanted the loan for, and she told them.
And they told her it was almost certainly a scam, but still let her have the money!

Excellent, and it’s good to know that there are easy ways to help the sellers. But as I said, our local vendors only take cash.

It’s also possible to support specific vendors online via the Big Issue site. I tried to sign up for this in lockdown, when I was worried about our local seller, and found that the Big Issue in the North (a separate entity) doesn’t offer this option.

The only way to support our guy is to yomp into town with your cash.

Sorry, my post was in answer to Alegrias’s.

Years ago, I had no change for our Big Issue seller and he nipped into WH Smith to get some, leaving me in charge of his dog and holding his magazines. There must have been a queue because a couple of the parents of children at the school where I worked mentioned that they’d seen me. They didn’t offer to buy a copy though, the tight so and sos.