I have just received notification from coop that they are closing my local branch because of the way that customers are choosing to bank with them. I havenât been in the branch recently but will have a requirement to do so soon - pay in a cheque.
The thought of messing about finding another branch or joining a queue at the equally remote PO has me looking to change banks again. I had a great relationship with HSBC both in Hong Kong and as a business account so I am giving them a shot. The ÂŁ200 switching bribe is obviously a bonus so is the associated 5% savings rates.
The point being why not Monzo or Starling for that matter? No bribe, no interest (Monzo), no CASS (Monzo) no joint accounts, no branches. Yes I know about branches and I am perfectly happy being cashless. Since my involvement with this forum I donât carry cash routinely. However I needed a pound coin for the supermarket trolley and my barber only takes cash.
I remain open minded but so far neither bank offers what I look for in 1 stop banking whereas HSBC does (albeit it at a cost)
Only just seen this thread - as this was me a couple of weeks ago and Iâve moved from Monzo back to my legacy bank or as I like to call it, my bank. The OP is almost word for word what I would/should have posted, almost identical gripes and reasons.
Hopefully Monzo will get up to speed sometime over the next year or so and I can be tempted back.
I really think that everything should still be in beta until ALL the kinks are ironed out. Final straw for me was when I was refused cash at a cash point just before Christmas, I donât know whoâs fault that was, Monzo or third party but it was the nail in the coffin for me. A couple of taps on the app, transfer my money back to Barclays, and then draw it out on that card, same cash point, same amount.
Please entice me back when everything works.
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Anarchist
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If you have a need to pay cheques in, and donât want to post them to Monzo, Iâd pick a bank with a local branch at which you can pay cheques in at an ATM.
Having taken the B bribe of ÂŁ250 I moved to them in November. I paid a cheque in via their app and it worked very well.
In my little contact with B on the phone, they were absolutely excellent. On a par with First Direct Customer service. As I only spoke to B on the phone a couple of time I canât say this is representative but those contacts were very good in themselves.
I am, however, leaving B because NatWest were doing a ÂŁ125 bribe. HSBC is still doing a ÂŁ200 bribe but I donât think either of those has cheque imaging as yet.
I donât recieve instant notifications in the same way that Monzo does. Transactions do appear in the app with a little clock next to them whilst the transaction is pending.
The app uses bright, bold and garish colours. I donât have anything against that particularly. Nice to be different, I suppose. The app is perfectly functional.
For instance (Starling and Monzo take note), I can set up multiple standing orders to same destination account number / sort code but have different references on each. Something as simple as this (that all other legacy banks Iâve used can do) seems to cause difficulty for the start-ups.
The cheque imaging worked brilliantly, though I recieve, on average, a couple of times a year.
Would I recommend B?
Well, if they were still paying ÂŁ250 for a new Customer Iâd say donât hesitate. On balance the app is fairly good if lacking a little polish and refinement. If youâre with First Direct, donât move. If youâre with a rubbish bank, consider B.
My âlocalâ HSBC branch has moved twice, its now 13 miles away. We now have 1 bank left where I live, and they are slowly all closing up in the next town over too
Yes it does, that is entirely my point! Unfortunately âstuffâ happens too often. I couldnât care less about Verifone, however I do care when I canât use my bank.
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Anarchist
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Much as I prefer to be cashless, this is the downside. Sometimes stuff doesnât work. Whether itâs a national outage, or a trader breaking their POS device, occasionally cash will be required.
Verifone breaking also means you canât use your bank⊠ANY of your banks. At least if one account fails, you pull out another card. Verifoneâs system failing in the context of trying to use your account was worse than even a Mastercard network failure would have been⊠it meant that in a shop using their service for a period of time yesterday, you couldnât use any of your bank cards on any network. Thus, the impact was actually much greater.
It seems concept of a âlocalâ branch is going away. Weâve lost most of the local branches in the last few years and only have left an RBS and a Barclays thatâs on restricted opening hours and probably isnât going to be around much longer.
It probably needs a 3rd party to step up and replace the functions of those places (mainly cheque and cash deposit I guess). Supermarkets might do it.
Not at Waitrose, SSP or a handful of others using Verifoneâs managed payments platform.
Oh, no, I totally get it. Any downtime sucks, for sure. But, of the two outages yesterday, at least Monzoâs wasnât as disruptive since alternative banks worked
Monzoâs failure yesterday was more disruptive to me.
âa handful of others using Verifoneâ in your previous post you said âANY bankâ
At the end of the day I was comparing a 15min outage on a sign up page to a few hrs of outage to a whole bank, so if you have to do the one up man thing and say at least it wasnât worse⊠well you win - congrats.
