A high street bank has sparked fury amongst local people in the seaside town of Canford Cliffs, Dorset, by restricting the services of its local branch to wealthy customers only. In the future only customers with £50,000 in savings, a £200,000 or £100,000 mortgage or an annual income of £75,000 will be able to use the bank’s services. All other account holders will have to make do with using the cash machine outside. The only way they will be allowed to use the branch is by paying the princely sum of £20.00 per month for the privilege!
A bank spokesman has rubbed salt in the wound by announcing in The Guardian, “We are trying to treat everyone fairly – not everybody in the world is equal”. Try telling that to the number of elderly and less able bodied customers who now have to travel to a branch in another area, because they are no longer welcome at their local branch. It doesn’t sound very fair to a lot of people including myself. At the end of the day it’s all about money and greedy bank bosses wanting to make as much money as they can, even if it means riding rough shod over ordinary people like you and I. Let’s hope that other high street banks don’t follow suit. Otherwise we’ll end up with a society where there’s a clear division between rich and poor and banking facilities are only available for the very affluent.
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4 years ago
3 comments:
Oh my this sounds like horrible public relations for the bank. I'd switch if I was one of their customers. How arrogant and elitist! A better solution would be to offer big money a personal banker available aside from typical customers. I hope people take their hard earned money elsewhere.
Interesting, as this is close to where my mother lives. She refuses to use a cash machine, because she's a little old lady and she hears so many stories of people being robbed by using the machine, or just after they've got cash out of it. That is likely to apply to many customers in that area, where there are a lot of old folk and this is just robbing them a different way, if you ask my opinion.
Here at my bank in Spain, there is a rule - applicable to both rich and poor alike - that to draw less than 600 euros (about £400) you must use the machine. Over that, they will serve you at the counter. We all pay around £5 a month, but this is fairer, I feel.
It's terrible public relations Sheila. I think they will lose an awful lot of customers over this.
I agree Pamela doing this is robbing customers in a different way and also many elderly do not know how to use a cash machine and prefer a personal face to face service. The Spanish system does sound a lot fairer. Thanks for stopping by.
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