HSBC weekend cashiers

Or rather, the lack of.

Aaargh! Noone told me! I lost my card a little while ago and had to get a new one ordered. So I'm stuck with cashing cheques (I won't use my credit card cos they charge you for it). My local town's bank is shut Saturday afternoon so I make sure to get in there for the morning, and go in to find the clerk positions are all shut! What? I'm not too late, they're not just about to shut!

So I ring for attention, and a lady comes down to explain to me that they started not opening them up on Saturdays. Basts! Apparently it's been like that for a month or two, and I don't remember receiving any mail about it (although I could be wrong). Now, you can tell I don't need the local bank's cashiers often as I hadn't noticed, but there are things that, when you do want them, it matters! I can pay checks in to the machines, I can use the machines to check my account and print a mini-statement; but cashing a cheque via a person or paying something in and getting it stamped would require me be there daytime on a weekday.

So basically I can now never use my 'home' bank's cashiers what with working in London. Ok, I can easily use London branches during the day as long as I can get out at lunchtimes which I usually can enough times in the week; but the weekend loss really sucks. I had a big complaint to them over the phone about it today when I checked whether it was just Farnham or all HSBC branches. My debit card was supposed to arrive by yesterday, and it didn't. Or today. They reckon it might arrive Monday, but basically I'm f$%^ed for cash till it does.

I'm sure if I was desparate I could borrow some from a friend but... It sucks. It really sucks.

What is it with banks these days - reminds me of the er.. Nationwide is it? advert also having a gripe at the other banks shutting branches, moving everything to outsourced call-centers in India/somewhere else half the staff don't quite understand/speak English as clearly as you'd like. I'm so tempted to move my banking to someone else who cares about their customers a bit more. Is there a bank that does? (Nationwide? dunno..)

Ok, rant over.

Tags: rant banks