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This discussion is amusing in a way, but misses the point somewhat.
The Banks have been gradually moving customers out of their Branches for years. Who remembers the 'good old days' when you formed a queue in front of a teller's cage in order to withdraw of deposit, to get your kids' Savings Account Book noted with their weekly sixpence deposit and so forth. And in those days there were cheques. Actual negotiable instruments.
But in time, we were squeezed out of the Branch and told to use the hole-in-the-wall outside. You could barely find the phone number for your local branch but had to negotiate a call centre to do any business with the Bank.
And then, cheques became the past and Internet Banking became the future. With that, went the demand for cash, large shops redesigned their customer interface to embrace the machine, to make the customer their own checkout chick, to make then accept having their photo taken any time they used their machines and were treated as a potential thief when doing so. It saved the shops a lot of money - staff and also indirectly in insuring cash in transit. It ended the careers of many a bank robber.
All this, in the name of the mighty god Mammon - the profit, the bottom line, the shareholder. Customer service became an advertising slogan not a policy.
I know I seem like an old-fashioned grumpy old man - and indeed I am. But that does not stop me from being nostalgic about the days when going to the bank was as much a social as a business experience.
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