Maybe I should just post this letter without comment. It's dated 25th October and I received it on Saturday, 2nd November. I have - and am finding it difficult to stop having - accounts with more than one high-street bank, and the Old Bank in this ongoing attempt to close an account is not necessarily the same bank as I mentioned recently here in another context. I have had good times with Old Bank, and I'm leaving - trying to leave - because I don't need the account any more. No other reason. Nice bank. Still love you.
Once upon a time, I believed that opening a bank account was difficult, and that it made sense never to close a bank account once opened. I might even have written something about that, in an opinion piece about a century ago. Then - I'm still not quite sure where the impulse came from - I closed a Singer & Friedlander Isle of Man account (useful for US dollar earnings, couple of other uses) about a month before Iceland turned up on the financial-news agenda. Luck, not judgement.
Somebody used the word "sinister" to describe the finance industry recently. Might even have been in a news broadcast. Not that I'd go that far, but as a retail customer, I am "significantly over-banked" (another phrase I heard somewhere) and not happy about it. My New Bank (to stick with the language of the Current Account Switch Guarantee, although I've had accounts there long enough to quality for some kind of loyalty bonus) is a building society. It has a slogan about not needing banks.
And it called me a week ago. Old Bank has never quite had my address right in its records, and (New Bank told me) this is holding up the switch (and, I suppose, the letters).
I like the idea of holding my current account with a financial institution that calls me up and tells me what the problem is.
And, I suppose, knows where I live.
Once upon a time, I believed that opening a bank account was difficult, and that it made sense never to close a bank account once opened. I might even have written something about that, in an opinion piece about a century ago. Then - I'm still not quite sure where the impulse came from - I closed a Singer & Friedlander Isle of Man account (useful for US dollar earnings, couple of other uses) about a month before Iceland turned up on the financial-news agenda. Luck, not judgement.
Somebody used the word "sinister" to describe the finance industry recently. Might even have been in a news broadcast. Not that I'd go that far, but as a retail customer, I am "significantly over-banked" (another phrase I heard somewhere) and not happy about it. My New Bank (to stick with the language of the Current Account Switch Guarantee, although I've had accounts there long enough to quality for some kind of loyalty bonus) is a building society. It has a slogan about not needing banks.
And it called me a week ago. Old Bank has never quite had my address right in its records, and (New Bank told me) this is holding up the switch (and, I suppose, the letters).
I like the idea of holding my current account with a financial institution that calls me up and tells me what the problem is.
And, I suppose, knows where I live.