Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Online banking

I tried to open a USD$ account in the UK for money owed and being paid in dollars. As a frequent traveller to US$ countries it seemed a great way to save currency conversion costs. Lloyds refused my application and wouldn't tell me why. (Been a customer since 1976). Challenged it through my "Private Banker" and they would't tell him either. Money was received and converted to £.

It's amazing the change in attitude over the years, the contrast today in levels of service and their approach is quite marked. Back in the 70'80's when I was working for a US Conglomerate travelling the world, my expenses were in dollars and in the days before exchange control was lifted, back then you were restricted to £750 a year plus £50 per day if on business for foreign currency exchange. My weekly expense cheques were well in excess of the foreign exchange allowance, so the Bank used to keep my $ cheques at the branch and feed them thru for clearance as the allowance allowed, at one point they had over six months of cheques waiting clearance and on several occasions I had to send time expired cheques back to the US for them to issue a new cheques, Maggie Thatcher removed the exchange control restrictions so the problem went away. That was the level of service I received without question from a bank which today told me they didn't have time to look up our online record.........

I recall Giles (pandy) commenting that post Brexit he was trying to open an English bank account but was unable to as he didn't have a UK address and he became a French national around that period which may have influenced, who knows.

Whether it's all about money laundering I know not but it was a pain for him as he used to come over for pick up's of English beer for his Parisian pubs at the time.

Got to say Rich - I dont know why you expect any service at all when you are proud of paying nothing for it. The argument about account balances simply doesnt work when the government is flooding the banking system with QE. Basically the banks dont need you ( or me for the same reason) and its only the big bureaucracy that stops them saying " sod off" to both of us

Good reason why you should never invest your money in bank shares - the big banks simply arent going anywhere

I too have not "paid / charged" for my banking service from Lloyds, and am also "proud" of it as it means I manage my money.
We live by the adage of of you can't afford it - we can't have it - simple

I say I haven't paid for my banking service - but we all do! - Who bailed out the banks during the outfall from the Lehmann's crash - we did - the taxpayers

Plus, every month my bank gets x thousands of pounds from me (and has done for the last 40 odd years) and invests it - I get something like 0.5% interest - or even less. They make more out of my money, than I do out of it.

Conversely we do pay 2.5% of my investment to Close Brothers who manage our Asset Managed Portfolio

If Lloyds paid a decent interest rate - I'd pay them to manage it

I moved to another bank after 35 years with them, due to the number of cock ups they made. Truly awful service.

I moved from them after they took me to court for non payment of my overdraft when I was a student

Completely fair - I racked up a large overdraft, and then when my grant cheque came in I opened a new account with Midland Bank instead.

My Dad was a bit annoyed - we have the same name so he got refused credit when trying to buy a car as he appeared to have a CCJ. Took an age to convince the credit agencies at the time that there were two people called 'Phil Coldicott' living at the same address...... We laugh about it now

My bank has been actively pursuing a policy of closing all our local branches as allegedly there is no demand for counter service, however we also loose the autobank / hole in the wall machine as each branch closes

Over the last 5yrs all four branches have closed so we are now forced to travel into the City centre, try and park and negotiate the numpties

You are intercepted by a nice customer rep holding an ipad, who asks what you want, which is irrelevant as you are still directed to join the same que of people, after counting over 40 people in front of me last time, I questioned "so no-one needs a counter service real bank then?"

We have been using Santander for years and they pay us for everything up to £20K. Anything over that goes into Virgin ( or Laithwaites if the cellar is getting low ) Credit cars are with MBNA and limited to a very small sum just in case and, yes, I still use cheques on occasion.

A few companies have introduced this welcome:triage program seeing how well it tends to work in Applestores. They always forget that in the Applestore everything is setup to run around it in the form of pre-booking access to the geekbench at the back of the store, reservation of deliveries with handover training if needed etc etc.

I watch companies aim to emulate the queue-busting formula with absolutely no idea that it is one element of a big cocktail of service. I almost pity them as they trip over themselves attempting to digitally transform/revolutionise/innovate (veneer style) instead of understanding what the underlying problem is.