Why is it that walking into a branch is such a completely unpleasant experience?

Shiminay

You've spent I don't know how long reducing the numbers of staff on Cashier duty and have moved people into "customer service" where they'll direct you to a machine, or a phone or a PC to do it yourself.  And you know what?  That's fine.  The *only* reason I'm ever taking time out of my day and walking into a branch is because you don't have a self-service option for whatever task it is I'm trying to take care of.  I would be curious to find out if I'm not alone.

Today I wanted to withdraw cash from a savings account.  I cannot do this from an ATM - I have no idea why.  I can request a transfer from this account to my current account, but the last time I tried that, it took 6 days.  6 days.  That is farcical.  So I had little choice but to go to the branch on Camden St in Dublin 8.

I am a former software engineer.  I have built software for financial transactions for insurance, credit card and personal loans products.  There is absolutely zero need for any electronic transfer to not be instantaneous, so lets stop pretending that "processing" of requests is anything more than your bank making money by having access to these funds (which must amount to millions on a daily basis) for your own needs.  If anyone has ever told you or continues to tell you any different, they are flat out lying to you and/or they are really, really terrible software engineers.  A business case could have been made for out of hours batch processing of data intensive work back in the 80s and 90s when computers didn't have a lot of grunt, but in 2014, a mobile phone has far more power than my first PC ever did.

So at the cashier's desk, I was told I had to talk to the one customer service person on duty so I could withdraw my money.  I don't know why, I never had to before.  I had a 35 minute wait.  Why a single member of staff was on duty during lunch on a Friday to manage this show's ineptitude on a local staffing level that is difficult to believe.  When I asked the CS staff member why I had been forced to go through this process when I never had to before, I was told "the system is down at the desks" which, if you'll forgive the cynicism, sounds like a BS answer if ever I heard it.

After 2 minutes, my withdrawal slip was filled in and I returned to the Cashier queue.  The same cashier who had sent me to the CS queue greeted me with an apology over how long it had taken (which was genuine and was appreciated).  I pointed out to him that I was pissed off with having wasted my lunch break over a simple withdrawal of my own bloody money, but it obviously wasn't his idea to enact a ridiculous time wasting and utterly customer unfriendly policy like this.

It put me in mind of Pat Shortt's character in Father Ted robbing the post office because he didn't want to fill out the forms.  After today, it looks like a far more sensible means of doing business.

So BOI Staff here on Boards, I know you can't directly do anything about this, but PLEASE, I need you to make sure that someone who can do something about this sort of nonsense does see it.  Long before this countries economic woes, people already hated doing business with banks because of this sort of treatment.  A terrible policy put together by people with no real-world knowledge or experience of what it's like to have to waste your time because of mismanagement and ineptitude of the company you're supposed to be able to trust with your money (and who have repeatedly demonstrated that this trust is far from justified).

HeidiHeidi

If it's any consolation, pTSB is just as bad.  But they don't charge you so much to be unhelpful.

Taxburden carrier

BOI see no value in your transaction. They will not say this to you directly so they will make the transaction as difficult as possible for you without actually telling you to go away.
Operating a branch costs money so unless you are buying a product you are surplus to requirement. 
Staff are under strict instruction to "migrate" you to online banking.

AlfaR147

BOI are not partly owned by the State as AIB and others are, so they operate differently. They are a profit making company and have realised that the branches are costing them too much. They are using the same basic priniples as Discounter Retailers, to a point, where the real work is done, and the money made, not at the desk(checkout), but behind the scenes. The more windows they have manned in a branch(or at a checkout), the higher the wage bill. It certainly is not customer friendly, but in the long run, it's designed to save us, the customer, money. 
We are far to used to having a person deal with us, when nearly everything can be done online! Just another sign of how in the dark ages we are still.

srsly78

Not only are BoI rubbish, they also give terrible interest on savings. Put your money somewhere else!

Still, the root cause is no real investment in IT for almost 20 years. At the OP said, they would have been happy to withdraw their money via ATM or I am sure transfer it first into a current account.

Irish Steve

There are so many things that cannot be done on line, it's not even funny.

A supposed on line banking system, but I can't get access to changing the daily limit on a debit card.

6 Days to transfer funds from one BOI account to another? That's verging on criminal, but we won't go there.

Getting a list of the active Direct Debits on the account, Not in real time on line, and hard to get in batch mode from the separate SEPA department that is not an online facility.

Making a one off payment to a beneficiary? Not without creating a beneficiary on line, which for a one off is a total pain.

Using Lodgement ATM's and expecting to be able to positively identify the lodgement on the statement? Forget it, there's no direct link from the piece of paper you get from the machine and the end item on the statement, which for a company that has to have accounts audited is a nightmare, the old system of having a number on the lodgement that carried across to the statement is too hard to do for the programmers they have now.

Unfortunately, the OP is correct that there has been a massive underinvestment in IT over a long period of time, and it's now even worse, as the bulk of the IT is outsourced, and the expertise in how the core systems worked has long gone, so fixing things, or upgrading them, as we have seen with SEPA, is a nightmare that has been so badly implemented it's not even funny, to the extent that an on line statement at certain times of the day does not show the correct account balance because the batch systems are synchronising and for a period of time, the same transaction is on the account twice.

I moved away from that sort of processing concept 20 years ago, for BOI to still be running anything batch that is so visible to the end user as part of an on line real time system is a very poor and sick joke, for which we are being forced to pay.  

As for trying to do things in branch, that's no longer deemed appropriate, they don't want customers in the branch, the only reason they have to do certain things in branch is because the IT side is so far behind the plot. I wonder how the branch manager would feel if he was told he could only get petrol between 10 and 12 on alternate Thursdays, and that payment had to be made electronically on the Tuesday before filling the vehicle. He's very rapidly go to another supplier that wasn't so restrictive with their trading methods, and rightly so.

Bank of Ireland: Billy

Shiminay wrote: »

You've spent I don't know how long reducing the numbers of staff on Cashier duty and have moved people into "customer service" where they'll direct you to a machine, or a phone or a PC to do it yourself.  And you know what?  That's fine.  The *only* reason I'm ever taking time out of my day and walking into a branch is because you don't have a self-service option for whatever task it is I'm trying to take care of.  I would be curious to find out if I'm not alone.

Today I wanted to withdraw cash from a savings account.  I cannot do this from an ATM - I have no idea why.  I can request a transfer from this account to my current account, but the last time I tried that, it took 6 days.  6 days.  That is farcical.  So I had little choice but to go to the branch on Camden St in Dublin 8.

I am a former software engineer.  I have built software for financial transactions for insurance, credit card and personal loans products.  There is absolutely zero need for any electronic transfer to not be instantaneous, so lets stop pretending that "processing" of requests is anything more than your bank making money by having access to these funds (which must amount to millions on a daily basis) for your own needs.  If anyone has ever told you or continues to tell you any different, they are flat out lying to you and/or they are really, really terrible software engineers.  A business case could have been made for out of hours batch processing of data intensive work back in the 80s and 90s when computers didn't have a lot of grunt, but in 2014, a mobile phone has far more power than my first PC ever did.

So at the cashier's desk, I was told I had to talk to the one customer service person on duty so I could withdraw my money.  I don't know why, I never had to before.  I had a 35 minute wait.  Why a single member of staff was on duty during lunch on a Friday to manage this show's ineptitude on a local staffing level that is difficult to believe.  When I asked the CS staff member why I had been forced to go through this process when I never had to before, I was told "the system is down at the desks" which, if you'll forgive the cynicism, sounds like a BS answer if ever I heard it.

After 2 minutes, my withdrawal slip was filled in and I returned to the Cashier queue.  The same cashier who had sent me to the CS queue greeted me with an apology over how long it had taken (which was genuine and was appreciated).  I pointed out to him that I was pissed off with having wasted my lunch break over a simple withdrawal of my own bloody money, but it obviously wasn't his idea to enact a ridiculous time wasting and utterly customer unfriendly policy like this.

It put me in mind of Pat Shortt's character in Father Ted robbing the post office because he didn't want to fill out the forms.  After today, it looks like a far more sensible means of doing business.

So BOI Staff here on Boards, I know you can't directly do anything about this, but PLEASE, I need you to make sure that someone who can do something about this sort of nonsense does see it.  Long before this countries economic woes, people already hated doing business with banks because of this sort of treatment.  A terrible policy put together by people with no real-world knowledge or experience of what it's like to have to waste your time because of mismanagement and ineptitude of the company you're supposed to be able to trust with your money (and who have repeatedly demonstrated that this trust is far from justified).

Hi Shiminay,

Many thanks for posting. 

Most Deposit Accounts do not have ATM cards so it is not possible to make withdrawals at an ATM. 

We’re disappointed to hear that you spent longer than anticipated in one of branches. Queue management is something that branch staff are acutely aware of. It may sometimes appear that minimum staff are on hand but please be assured that they constantly facilitate customer meetings, carry out administrative work and work “behind the scenes”.  We’ll ensure to pass your comments about the experience you had to the branch network. 

Thanks again for taking the time to post.

Billy