andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2011-02-22 01:33 pm
andrewducker) wrote2011-02-22 01:33 pm
Funny Money
So, what with being off to Tenerife for a week, we needed some Euros.
The nearest bank to my work is an RBS at the top of the street, so I wandered along at lunchtime.
They have a system I've not seen before - you use a touch screen to tell a computer what it is you want, and it then gives you a ticket that puts you in the correct queue. You can then take a seat, and when someone is free who can deal with your issue then there's an announcement (vocal and on screens) telling you where to go. It seems to work pretty well.
Better than the actual process of getting some cash did, anyway. I don't bank with RBS, but I assumed that I'd be able to just use my Visa Debit card to pay them, and they'd then hand me some European wonga.
Sadly, this was not to be the case. It turns out that (a)accepting payment from a debit card is beyond the abilities of RBS, and (b) they only sell Euros (and presumably other currency) in presized bundles (€100, €250, etc.).
So rather than saying "£350 worth of your finest european currency please, here is my card." I had to go first get the cashier to do some maths to work out what the best fit was for £350 worth of euros, and then go and find a cash machine upstairs, take out £300 on my card (that being the maximum it allows per day), and £60 on our joint card (thank goodness for having a joint account!), take that cash downstairs, and hand it over so that she could hand me four envelopes (sealed, of course, and I didn't have the energy to open each of them and check - so I'll be very grumpy if they're wrong when I get home).
Presumably the cash will then be taken back upstairs and put back into the ATM so that someone else can do the same thing for _their_ holiday money.
Somehow, it doesn't feel quite as efficient as it could be.
The nearest bank to my work is an RBS at the top of the street, so I wandered along at lunchtime.
They have a system I've not seen before - you use a touch screen to tell a computer what it is you want, and it then gives you a ticket that puts you in the correct queue. You can then take a seat, and when someone is free who can deal with your issue then there's an announcement (vocal and on screens) telling you where to go. It seems to work pretty well.
Better than the actual process of getting some cash did, anyway. I don't bank with RBS, but I assumed that I'd be able to just use my Visa Debit card to pay them, and they'd then hand me some European wonga.
Sadly, this was not to be the case. It turns out that (a)accepting payment from a debit card is beyond the abilities of RBS, and (b) they only sell Euros (and presumably other currency) in presized bundles (€100, €250, etc.).
So rather than saying "£350 worth of your finest european currency please, here is my card." I had to go first get the cashier to do some maths to work out what the best fit was for £350 worth of euros, and then go and find a cash machine upstairs, take out £300 on my card (that being the maximum it allows per day), and £60 on our joint card (thank goodness for having a joint account!), take that cash downstairs, and hand it over so that she could hand me four envelopes (sealed, of course, and I didn't have the energy to open each of them and check - so I'll be very grumpy if they're wrong when I get home).
Presumably the cash will then be taken back upstairs and put back into the ATM so that someone else can do the same thing for _their_ holiday money.
Somehow, it doesn't feel quite as efficient as it could be.
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As a result most places on the mainland just refused them in case they accepted the wrong ones. In theory it shouldn't be a problem these days now that the punt is no more, but the habit still remains I suspect.
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And no-one when I was younger was ever entirely sure if the exchange rate was tied at 1:1 or if they were acceptable over here or not. Not prejudice I suspect, just uneducated.
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(The debit kind of plastic, not the credit, that has a whole host of other problems!)