Funny Money

Funny Money

I was walking along the fine boulevards of Edinburgh a few weeks ago when I saw a man standing outside the offices of one of the Scottish banks. And what drew my attention was a large placard he was holding with the inscription: "My bank is the pits."

What was really striking was that none of the passers-by looked in the least surprised. They were nodding and saying hello, as if to say: "Too bloody right, ours is as well." He didn't look like an obsessive, more Man at M&S than Man at Outpatients. He wasn't shouting through a megaphone and there was no sign of the long-term wacko-protestor's fold-up camping stool.

So what was making Mr Regular Guy stand outside his bank on a cold afternoon?

I didn't ask him for one simple reason. It could have been just about anything. Next time you sit down with some friends ask them about their banks and it all pours out. "And then when I tried to complain they me left in a call-centre queue for seven hours, because they bounced the cheque every stick of furniture I owned was taken away by bailiffs, who were charging me £800 per minute."

Don't ask. It's always the worst story ever. And no, they didn't move their account afterwards.

We have such dysfunctional relationships with our banks, there's probably a separate branch of analysis called Finance Therapy. It would have customers sobbing away in those little plywood booths where mortgage interviews are held.

"After 20 years.....continued below

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together, the bank still treats me like a stranger. It's never shown me a single sign that it cares."

And the therapy would be a recorded message from a call-handling service. "Your breakdown is important to us. Unfortunately none of our therapists are available at the moment."

We stay with the same banks for decades and never feel like we've anything to show for it. Instead it feels like a cold war of mutual suspicion. Banks give me as little as possible and I try to do the same in return. Isn't that an unhealthy way to feel? Despite years of the bank being part of my everyday life, the relationship feels as frosty as a polar bear's cocktail shaker.

And it's not really the lack of service that makes us feel bad, it's that twisted relationship. Because to be fair, banks, like old-style Stalinist states, have made concessions to consumers. If you want to see how annoying banks used to be, look at the "banking in the 1970s project" being recreated in post offices up and down the land. Branches are being shut down, the queues are ridiculous and they're never open when you need them.

Maybe banks are making enough cash to put up two fingers to the punters (and wouldn't that make a refreshingly honest advertising concept?). But one day, when the placard changes to the End is Nigh (or more likely the End is Tesco), they might regret not making friends with the bloke standing outside in the cold.

s.coughlan@virgin.net

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