€2.50 a page...wtf??

Pub07

I rang up AIB yesterday to request a bank statement for the last 12 months. They said they'd sent me out one for the last 3 months and I should get it in 3 or 4 days. For the other 9 months, they said it'll take 10 days to arrive and will cost €2.50 a page! Does anyone else think this is a complete ****ing joke? €2.50 for a sheet of paper with a small bit of ink on it that costs next to nothing to produce, I can't believe they are that uptight to charge their customers this much for this basic service, what a shower of bastards.

jaffa20

why do you need a 3 month statement. I'm happy they are charging that amount. Environmental issue and all. Why do we need to waste so much paper You can check your statement with online banking.

Run_to_da_hills

It will be e5 a page next time, they need alll the money they can get

sock.rocker*

jaffa20 wrote: »

why do you need a 3 month statement. I'm happy they are charging that amount. Environmental issue and all. Why do we need to waste so much paper You can check your statement with online banking.

are you lik 12 and never needed a statement for anything? i cud list about 10 reasons you cud need a statement.

i needed an aib statement for 12 months and the girl told me i cudnt get it.. i'd hav paid the 2.50 a page aswell. as ridiculous as it is.

Do you not keep your bank statements?

sock.rocker*

Myth wrote: »

Do you not keep your bank statements?

all posted to an old address. heinsight wud have me change my address everytime i move.

cormie

I hope this doesn't mean I'm paying €2.50 for every page I get my regular statement on:eek: Maybe the €2.50 is just an admin charge of having to go back and get an old statement printed and sent off?

mathias

Sometimes a request a for a 12 month statement is for mortgage purposes , especially if you have been in your current job for less than 2 years.
( I was asked for this myself about 3 years ago and the price was the same then.)

They have been charging 2.50 a page for this service for a long time , the best way around this is online banking , where you can print off your own copy of the last 12 months transactions easily.

Standard issue statements are a lot less , so for the wise , keep these in case you need them in future ... 2.50 a page makes for a hell of a bill if you have to go to the bank for a copy.

Tarakiwa

Request the data under the Data Protection Act - maximum charge is €6.35 and they have to get it all to you within 40 days maximum!

sock.rocker*

sock.rocker* wrote: »

all posted to an old address. heinsight wud have me change my address everytime i move.

Have you informed the bank that you never received them so?

cormie

Ah I didn't read the original post properly. So they are only charging the €2.50 on the first of the 12 months. It's both a good and bad idea because at the moment, as far as I know and as far as I hope, I don't get charged for my statements (which I think I requested to be sent only every 6 months or the longest option at the time) so all I need to do is keep these statements in a folder if I ever need them which means I'll always be getting my statements and always be using paper but it's better they print them than I print them as I'm sure their printers are more green friendly than mine

But for somebody who doesn't regularly need statements, it encourages them not to go the online route if they think they may have to pay for if they ever need them.

m@cc@

Can you not download a statement online?

SEPT 23 1989

i have had to do the same thing recently from the same bank and it came to €375.00 euro,its because they say that all old bank statements have to be retrieved from their archive files,just another way these institutions fleece their customers:mad:

Saint_Mel

AIB offer an e-Statement service on the Online Banking

Naos

Tarakiwa wrote: »

Request the data under the Data Protection Act - maximum charge is €6.35 and they have to get it all to you within 40 days maximum!

Does anyone else know if this would actually work? Not that I'm doubting you Tarakiwa, just nice to see a second and even third opinion on this

cormie

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

i have had to do the same thing recently from the same bank and it came to €375.00 euro,its because they say that all old bank statements have to be retrieved from their archive files,just another way these institutions fleece their customers:mad:

€375.00 :eek: You must do a lot of transactions if that was just for 12 months, wow

mikemac

I work in a bank.
OP, the reason we charge you €2.50 per page is because it takes time to do all this and it cuts out timewasters.

You were already posted a statement FREE OF CHARGE and it’s not the banks fault you didn’t update your current address. In fact you'd want to sort this asap for identity theft.
Yes, we know people throw away bank statements or lose them but this is supposed to make you be careful.

If this charge wasn’t there, we have every crank and timewaster wanting one page from 1997 and two pages from 2004, etc.
Time is money and the customer service staff are needed to help people with other queries. Ever been stuck in a queue in a bank for ages but it wasn’t the cashier? This charge is doing you a favour.

Banks give you statements and most current accounts don’t even charge any fees at all. You lose your statement, don’t come looking for a free one unless you’re actually applying for a loan or mortgage.

Yes, banks are greedy, flame away!:p

i71jskz5xu42pb

Naos wrote: »

Does anyone else know if this would actually work? Not that I'm doubting you Tarakiwa, just nice to see a second and even third opinion on this

Yes according this (UK granted). Nothing to lose really.

SEPT 23 1989

no it was for a business account it would be nice if was my personal account:)

i71jskz5xu42pb

micmclo wrote: »

OP, the reason we charge you €2.50 per page is because it takes time to do all this

Why does it take so much time? Is this not all on computer? The big banks were making billion euro profits in the past few years. Maybe if they invested some of that in their IT systems they would not need to charge 2.50 a page, it would just be a question of printing it off.

professore

micmclo wrote: »

I work in a bank.
OP, the reason we charge you €2.50 per page is because it takes time to do all this and it cuts out timewasters.

Much as I hate banks, I have to say I understand this charge. If you are in any business and you offer anything for free, people will take advantage. It's like toilet services where you have to pay something ... at least you're much more likely to get a nice clean cubicle rather than one where every scumbag in town has destroyed.

professore

Derek Howling Cub wrote: »

Why does it take so much time? Is this not all on computer? The big banks were making billion euro profits in the past few years. Maybe if they invested some of that in their IT systems they would not need to charge 2.50 a page, it would just be a question of printing it off.

... using millions of extra sheets of paper a year, and thousands of extra man-hours processing the requests.

€25 for a repeat prescription at the doctors ... now THATS a rip-off.

Tarakiwa

Naos wrote: »

Does anyone else know if this would actually work? Not that I'm doubting you Tarakiwa, just nice to see a second and even third opinion on this

No problem!! I would like to see what others think too!

As far as I am aware, I am right though!!

Data requests under the Act must be in writing and carry a maximum charge of €6.35.

If anybody knows better please let us know!

mikemac

Confirmed!
Yes, you can request your account info under Data Protection Act.
It'll cost you €6.35 and the price of a stamp.
It was highlighted by Matt Cooper on Today FM about two years back and loads do it

But please, banks need your fees, times are hard

Run_to_da_hills

micmclo wrote: »

I work in a bank.
OP, the reason we charge you €2.50 per page is because it takes time to do all this

Are you are still using typewriters ? :rolleyes:

i71jskz5xu42pb

professore wrote: »

... using millions of extra sheets of paper a year, and thousands of extra man-hours processing the requests.

A sheet of paper does not cost €2.50. A ream of paper does not cost €2.50.

"man-hours processing the requests" - you must have missed the part in my comment about the computer. Contrary to popular belief there are no little men inside the computer. No reason why the process could not be fully automated - except that the bank don't want to invest in it.

Ciaran500

professore wrote: »

... using millions of extra sheets of paper a year, and thousands of extra man-hours processing the requests.

How long could it take and how much paper could it use? If you only got 5 pages off them that would be about an hours wage + paper costs.

I agree there should be a charge for it but €2.50 a page is a joke.

stevoman

Pub07 wrote: »

I rang up AIB yesterday to request a bank statement for the last 12 months. They said they'd sent me out one for the last 3 months and I should get it in 3 or 4 days. For the other 9 months, they said it'll take 10 days to arrive and will cost €2.50 a page! Does anyone else think this is a complete ****ing joke? €2.50 for a sheet of paper with a small bit of ink on it that costs next to nothing to produce, I can't believe they are that uptight to charge their customers this much for this basic service, what a shower of bastards.

i got hit for €75 for my bank statement last year. its the same with all the banks its a joke. they take our money abd boorow on foot of our cash and then we pay the bills.its a joke is what it is. of course though its ireland so what else would you expect.

cormie

Well if your statement is only 2 pages, that's only €5 they are getting for retrieving the info, printing it, putting it in an envelope and posting it. Not a lot really considering they've already done it and if everyone requested that, it would waste a lot of time, so if it was any cheaper than €5, this operation would soon be going at a loss.

€2.50 for every page is a joke though. It should be €2.50 for the first 4 pages or something and then €10c per page thereafter.

All banks will be bringing in this fee over the next fee months so get used to it. They are following mainland Europe and the UK's lead.

mikemac

stevoman wrote: »

i got hit for €75 for my bank statement last year. its the same with all the banks its a joke. they take our money abd boorow on foot of our cash and then we pay the bills.its a joke is what it is. of course though its ireland so what else would you expect.

You were given a bank statement already.
If you lost, burned, threw away the statement the bank staff aren't going do another one free of charge.
They don't take anyone's money, you deposited it with them, go to another bank if you're unhappy. There is a switching practice for this so it's easy to do and then just amend your direct debits and and whatever else you've arranged.
Cynical attitude there, I bet you're thinking "all banks are the same"

You sound like the kind of customer who makes my life hell every day.

Oh yeah, this is Ireland :rolleyes:
Do you think Irish banks are the only ones who do this? Take a trip up to Northern Ireland and enquire about it.

seamus

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Are you are still using typewriters ? :rolleyes:

Computers are at their most useful and cost effective when doing things in large batches. Getting a computer (and machinery) to perform repetitive tasks over and over is what they were designed for and 50 years later it's still what they're best at. The more times it has to repeat the task in any given run, the cheaper the unit cost becomes.

Consequently, the less times a task has to be repeated, the more expensive each unit in the run becomes.

When the bank does up its customer's statements, there aren't fifty people standing by a colour printer, taking out the statements, folding and collating them and stuffing them into envelopes. It's all done by a large and expensive machine. The cost of this machine is written off no doubt using fancy accounting tricks, but it's also an accepted cost of doing business as a bank. Since it's used for doing thousands of customer statements in a matter of minutes, the bank saves money on having to employ fifty people for five days to do the same volume of work.

However, when you request just one measly statement, the cost of powering up all this machinery just for your statement, or even just for the fifty other statements requested that day, outweighs any possible customer service benefit and cost saving. So they take one of their existing employees, have them print out your statement using a smaller machine and manually stuff it into an envelope for you. This costs them money, Since they've already spent money issuing this statement to you previously, it's only right that they pass this cost onto you.

Since this is manual labour and requires an employee who could otherwise be doing something which makes money for the bank, the bank quite intelligently charge enough money to make reprints unpopular with customers, and also to make a small bit of money out of the customer when they do request a reprint, so that the employee whose time is being used, is still being productive.

After all, it's not their fault if you have lost your statement or changed address and forgotten to tell the bank.

i71jskz5xu42pb

seamus wrote: »

However, when you request just one measly statement, the cost of powering up all this machinery just for your statement, or even just for the fifty other statements requested that day, outweighs any possible customer service benefit and cost saving. So they take one of their existing employees, have them print out your statement using a smaller machine and manually stuff it into an envelope for you.

If your IT department can't find their ass with both hands this would be the case. Any professional IT department should be able to set it up so that a request for a past statement gets dealt with in much the same manner as a this month's statement.
It all comes down to how much the bank are prepared to invest in customer service. Very little would seem to be the answer.

m@cc@

Just on the topic of banks, the other week my mobile bill came to a bit more than I had expected but I was abroad at the time, so I had no way of sorting it out. The bank ended up paying the bill for me, charging me 30 quid for being overdrawn and 30 quid for paying the bill, ending up with me being charged 60 quid for being about 3 pounds overdrawn.

I went into the bank and gave them hell and argued that the charge far exceeded any damage caused to the bank. I also said that since the legality of these charges had yet to be truely tested, I would be taking the matter further. Needless to say, I was fully refunded.

seamus

Derek Howling Cub wrote: »

If your IT department can't find their ass with both hands this would be the case. Any professional IT department should be able to set it up so that a request for a past statement gets dealt with in much the same manner as a this month's statement.

You'll find that most banks are using very large and very inaccessible systems like SAP. Yes you could tick a "include statement in this month's run" box, however this would no doubt require a rewrite of the existing code in the system or a certain extent of customisation. Since banks require IT systems with a rather insane degree of stability, this item would need to be in testing for up to a year.

The cost of the developer would also be quite much. The systems in use don't use simple java libraries, C++ or PHP, they tend to use obscure or specialist languages such as COBOL or ABAP. As such, the developers charge large amounts of money for their time in working with, testing, debugging and extra fees for just sticking around until go-live.

So all in all, implementing a tiny feature which will benefit a minority of clumsy and absent-minded customers (who probably don't actually have that much in the bank - people with a lot of money are more careful with their banking), would cost a lot of time and around €500,000 euro.

That sounds like a smart investment.

m@cc@

seamus wrote: »

You'll find that most banks are using very large and very inaccessible systems like SAP.

I can't comment about a banking enviroment but I haven't found SAP particularly inaccessible for running statements.

beerbaron

micmclo wrote: »

I work in a bank.


You were already posted a statement FREE OF CHARGE
Banks give you statements and most current accounts don’t even charge any fees at all. Yes, banks are greedy, flame away!:p

Try that again there !

m@cc@

beerbaron wrote: »

Try that again there !

Am I missing something?

seamus

m@cc@ wrote: »

I can't comment about a banking enviroment but I haven't found SAP particularly inaccessible for running statements.

It's fine for running statements, great in fact.

The issue is that when you do a run, the cost incurred is in powering up the machinery which does it for you. So the more statements in the run, the cheaper the run costs. However, most systems will not allow you to include a one-off random statement in a standard run - it's usually a matter of saying, "Run all due statements from account number 00000001 to 99999999". To add in a random request would require customisation of the system.

Try that again there !

I've had a BOI account for 12 years and I've never paid bank charges.

mikemac

beerbaron wrote: »

Try that again there !

You cut different bits out of my post, I've no idea what your point was?

Trying adding your opinion if you have one

robinph

seamus wrote: »

However, when you request just one measly statement, the cost of powering up all this machinery just for your statement, or even just for the fifty other statements requested that day, outweighs any possible customer service benefit and cost saving. So they take one of their existing employees, have them print out your statement using a smaller machine and manually stuff it into an envelope for you. This costs them money, Since they've already spent money issuing this statement to you previously, it's only right that they pass this cost onto you.

Your making it sound as if this is the first person ever in the history of banking to ask for copies of old statements.

Yes, I'm sure all of their systems they have for printing out all the paperwork are all very fancy and expensive. I don't belive that it takes more than a couple of button presses to add a print job for some old customer statement to the current run though. I'd also be highly doubtfull that there is any human interaction with the request after the point at which the customer service person has put their phone down from speaking to you and hit the "print" button to send the request to the big/ fancy/ expensive machine.

m@cc@

seamus wrote: »

It's fine for running statements, great in fact.

The issue is that when you do a run, the cost incurred is in powering up the machinery which does it for you. So the more statements in the run, the cheaper the run costs. However, most systems will not allow you to include a one-off random statement in a standard run - it's usually a matter of saying, "Run all due statements from account number 00000001 to 99999999". To add in a random request would require customisation of the system.

Maybe the setup is different for banking but I work in the accounting industry and if a customer requests a statement, it really is no more than a couple of clicks away. In the majority of cases, I even e-mail it to them to save time.

Miguel_Sanchez

I can't understand why people just let their bank statements go to old addresses and not care.

I get so many statements and bank offers addressed to people I've never even heard of sent to my house. If I was an indentity theft kinda guy I'd be sitting pretty.

I'm not though and anyone who tells you different is a liar. A Liar I tells ya! :cool:

m@cc@

Jeff_Lebowski wrote: »

I can't understand why people just let their bank statements go to old addresses and not care.

I get so many statements and bank offers addressed to people I've never even heard of sent to my house. If I was an indentity theft kinda guy I'd be sitting pretty.

I'm not though and anyone who tells you different is a liar. A Liar I tells ya! :cool:

I don't even bother getting statements posted out anymore. The internet is where it's at.

jaycen

Call them up, argue your case, threaten to move the account, they always discount - might not do it for free but should get a chunk off, they're usually reasonable about it.

astrofool

You can print them off using the online account and then the bank will be happy to stamp it for you. Mortgage companies are usually happy enough with this (just make sure you have the latest offical 3 month statement).

In my case, the bank printed the internet statement, stamped it, and sent it to me, no charge (and less than the €6.35 data protection charge).

mikemac

m@cc@ wrote: »

I don't even bother getting statements posted out anymore. The internet is where it's at.

Because everyone in Ireland is able to use a computer or even has access to the internet?
Good for you but it doesn't work out that easy for hundreds of thousands of people.

On a related note, for credit cards if you have one , you can't ask them to stop sending statements.
It doesn't matter if you are in a houseshare and your housemates are robbing your post.

The bank sends a statement so the customers can't rack up a bill and turn around and "I never knew, the evil bank didn't show me the credit card balance, I'm not paying now blah blah". They don't understand personal responsibility!
So if you ask to stop credit card statements and the bank refuses, now you know why.
Could be a legal requirment too, better check that out

4Xcut

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

i have had to do the same thing recently from the same bank and it came to €375.00 euro,its because they say that all old bank statements have to be retrieved from their archive files,just another way these institutions fleece their customers:mad:

No, it's just another way of them encouraging their customers not to be stupid. You could keep your own statements, you could print it off online banking or you could just not have banked with aib if you didn't like part of the terms of agreement......Did you not check them all, tough. Did I when i signed up, no. But then again i rent a huge warehouse to keep those 4 letters i get from them each year safe.

Will people stop bitching about being charged for a service.

Run_to_da_hills

A reem of A4 paper costs about e3.00 for 500 Sheets whole sale.
At 2.50 a sheet the banks are making e1247 out of a reem :eek:

Lads we are in the wrong business

Miguel_Sanchez

micmclo wrote: »

Because everyone in Ireland is able to use a computer or even has access to the internet?
Good for you but it doesn't work out that easy for hundreds of thousands of people.

Internet Cafe. 1 or 2 euro for a half hour's access.

If you can't use computers get a relative that can to help you.

Simple.

Epic Tissue

Jeff_Lebowski wrote: »

Internet Cafe. 1 or 2 euro for a half hour's access.

If you can't use computers get a relative that can to help you.

Simple.

:rolleyes:

I have a student account. Does this make me exempt from getting charged on statements?:D I never noticed or realised I was being charged. Does it appear on the statement?