General Chat

Our village post office is owned by the couple who run it. They are paid by Royal Mail for the work they actually do in the shop, by the item, on a sort of commission basis.

I was talking to the postmistress one day and she was telling me that they couldn't manage on the post office alone, particularly after covid, when people couldn't use it. She did not like this new idea of collecting parcels from home, as it meant less work for them. The parcels go straight to the sorting office in town. The day I was in, they had taken about £20, mostly in the attached shop, which didn't cover the costs, let alone living expenses. They survive because her husband is a computer whizz and has a sideline in fixing computer problems for the villagers.

She reckoned when they retired the post office would close, because there wouldn't be anyone willing to take it over. This could well be the reason why so many post offices are now part of large stores. :-(

One of the Lloyds which is closing is in my town. I actually bank with Nationwide and the branch in my town has just changed so that it is now only open on three days a week. Having said that, I do all my banking on line and rarely use cash, so I can’t remember the last time I went into the bank.

We had a day out today and I was going to use cash for the parking meter, but when I looked, I didn’t have enough. It wasn’t a problem though as I just used my credit card in the machine.

In my local bank Jl, you used to be able to just walk in and see someone to open an account there and then, the same as when I worked in a bank 30 years ago.

When I was in a few years ago, I needed to open a sole account for me, not only did I have to make an appointment, the officer dealing with opening accounts only worked part time !! I had to wait over a week to open a new account.

I also once said to the officer trying to get me to use a machine to do my business, if you keep making me use a machine, one day your job will be redundant. She smiled and said, just trying to help you get sorted a little quicker. I replied, I prefer to be served by a real human especially when paying cash into my account.

Personally, I don't think we will ever be a complete cashless society as when card payments don't work because the telephone lines are down,(it happens quite often) the businesses have to have a back up plan..ie accept cash else otherwise how is the customer going to pay the bill??

What would happen if you were in a restaurant, your bill is say £80 and your card won't work in the machine? When ever we have been out, I actually always have £100 in my purse for the just in case as well as my debit card. I always have a plan B, its what my father taught me and there have been times where I'm jolly glad I have had cash in my purse.

Florence in the hebrides

About the Post Office - I kept the leaflet I got last year which told us that if we bought postage online, the Post Office will collect your parcel from your home or work. It also says that if you can’t print out a label, they will bring one with them.

Competition is to our benefit, I think.

We are lucky here so far as we still have branches of the major banks that you can walk into, not that I have done so since last year as I use telephone banking as it’s so easy - even better than online, I’d say as I stopped online banking about 20 years ago.

I did find last year that the counters for individual customers had changed. Where once you could walk in join the queue for any counter, personal customers were confined to two counters at the back of the bank and one of those was also the foreign counter. The old (five, I think) counters visible as you enter the bank had disappeared in favour of machines for firms to deposit their takings (a bit like the night safe outside) and a couple of ‘floorwalkers’ were available to help anyone having difficulty.

The other bank I use was pretty much the same - you queued at the counter to bank - but if you wanted to see someone about anything different you had to make an appointment first rather than sit and wait as you did in the past.

Our Post Office situation is similar to Maggie's.

We used to have an "outreach" sub-PO in a room in the village hall for two hours per week, but that ended during the pandemic.
Not that it was very useful in any case. As often as not, the man's computer wasn't working, which meant a lot of services weren't available .

Our two nearest towns, 20 and 25 miles away, each used to have a big main PO, plus two or three sub-POs, but now only have one PO each, at the back of WH Smith in one town, and in Tesco in the other.

We are relatively lucky to have a PO in the Co-op, in a village "only" 7 miles away - but no public transport to go there.
Or at least, you can go, but then have to hang around for hours before there's a bus to take you home again.

Our local Barclays closed down last year

If you want to actually go into a branch it’s .8 miles away and you need your own transport to get there .

They say you can get cash or pay in at the local post office!

Fortunately I do online banking and have sussed how to pay in a check online and get cash from atms but not everyone is that savvy

My hubby went every week to draw out cash and pay in cheques and he wouid absolutely been lost cos he never ever used a computer

I agree with you, Susie.
My sister regularly has to pay cheques into her (once) local bank.
Whatever time of day she went in there, there was a queue - but it was closed due to a 'lack of custom'!

It's all very well saying money can be paid into a Post Office, but they've closed branches too! There used to be 3 in Winchester - one being the huge 'main' post office.
Now there's one - squeezed into the back of W H Smiths, with ONE person behind the counter, and a few machines that rarely work, so you can attempt to do the work yourself.
The queues regularly block the aisles of the shop, ensuring you can't see all the birthday cards etc.

We have a branch of BoS in the village which is open two days a week and usually busy. There is also a mobile RBS bank which does the same as the one that ArgyllGran 's one, spending 15 mins each week in the village carpark.

I have looked at the list of Scottish branches which are closing and ours isn't included.

A lot of people still use cash and all the local shops will accept it. OH only uses a debit card when he has to, otherwise it is all cash/cheques.

I saw somewhere that the main reason banks said they were closing branches was because so few people actually went in there anymore. As this claim was made just after the Covid lockdown this was hardly surprising. Am I being cynical here in thinking it was just a good, if rather lame, excuse?

My mum can use the Post Office yes but she said it's a very small building and very busy. Any transaction she's doing can be heard and seen by everyone. Therefore any cash she takes out can make her a target, in the bank there was a little more privacy......granted still not great and she could have been targetted still but she felt safer.
When I was a child there we had at least 10 banks/post offices/building societies branches within easy walking distance (many more using a car/bus) now there's one post office and a mini post office within a shop I believe.
Over here in Canada of course they've closed some branches but it doesn't seem to be as bad as in the UK. They closed my local branch of my bank but they left an ATM in a shop, but 2 other banks are still in the same immidiate area plus others very close by. My banks branch now does require a quick car/bus ride to get to it. They all seem to be busy enough to keep open so quite why the UK ones keep closing in such numbers seems strange.

Duncan , that reminded me of my grandmother who decided to save a few pounds here and there but not save it in the bank! When she passed, dad decided to spring clean the house and take down the curtains in the back sitting room.

They were full length heavy velvet curtains. As he lifted them from the bottom, he felt weights inside the hem, presumably to keep them hanging straight but when he put his hand into the hem, he found rolled up bundles of £10 notes.

In all there was over £18000 I think or there abouts! Grandma & grandad were always careful with their money but was a shock to find it there.

In my local town over 20 miles away, I have seen notes on the wall behind tills in shops and it says "minimum spend on card £10.00." This is because the processing charges to the business are expensive, hence the minimum spend.

But what will happen to all the street collections at carnivals, the baking stall, bric a brac etc at fundraising events? They wont have card machines. We often have events throughout the summer here and they have stalls in the town where cash is the norm.

How will this affect them and all the other little charities that have collections either in the street or outside a supermarket in the future?

ArgyllGran, yes you can use the PO to get cash and a cashback at the supermarket which is something I guess. In another part of this area, the post mistress is retiring and she owns the building as it is a shop as well.

She also had a lottery machine which many of the older folk use rather than buying it online. So when that closes, it will leave a big gap for people.

But did you know, that you can open an account online and transfer money into that account but to withdraw, you have to take 3 forms of ID into a branch? I was told that recently by someone on the mainland who didn't have a local branch but had to travel an hour on a bus to get to a bank!

A family member use to get their pension in cash at the PO every week until they were forced with 2 options, either have your pension paid into you bank account or open a PO account. They chose the latter and then draw out the whole amount in cash. They feel there privacy is being invaded as when using the card, the bank can see exactly how they spend their money....all about control!!

Florence in the hebrides

On a lighter note when my Dad died and I went to close his bank account taking proof of who I am, the manageress said I didn't need to show her that because I look to much like him and that was proof enough, she said for me to send the funeral bill to the bank and it would be paid for from his account and the rest paid into my account, you don't get that from a machine lol.

I'm church treasurer, so regularly have to bank cash, although since the pandemic most people now donate by standing order.

We're 20 miles from the nearest bank branch.

However, there's a mobile branch of RBS which parks in the village for 15 minutes every Tuesday, and for similar short times in a couple of other villages, 7 and 10 miles away, which is a lifeline. Fortunately, our account is with RBS.

You can also bank cash and cheques at a Post Office, into pretty much any bank, so long as you have a debit card for your bank account, and so long as the cash is bagged up in full bags. They won't take anything less than a full bag, which they can weigh, so that they don't have to count it.
A lot of small businesses bank their cash that way now, if they're a long way from a branch of their bank.


I do my personal banking online, but if I need cash, I get it via the Post Office, or as cashback at a supermarket (nearest PO and supermarket are 7 miles away).
I never use ATMs.

I bank with the co-op, after all their branch closures my nearest is now in Lewisham in London, a ridiculous journey living in Rochester.

Your post reminded me of my Great Uncle Harold. He was a strange man with some strange beliefs. He hated banks, he also hated fridges for some reason best known to himself. When he was given a fridge he refused to have it in the house, but kept it at the bottom of his garden - unplugged of course. When the old fivers were taken out of circulation we found out what he had done with his fridge - he filled it with all the fivers he had amassed over the years, and kept them in the garden unlocked! He refused to take them to a local bank as he didn't trust any of them, so he gathered them all into a suitcase and caught a combination of buses - I dread to think how many - to take them to the Bank of England in Central London to exchange them for new ones, which he brought home by the same method and put them back in the fridge in his garden, where they stayed until he died!

Caroline, my mother always kept money in the house for taxis, her hair every Saturday, the window cleaner who I hardly think carried a card payment card machine in his back pocket! She like your mum in earlier days went to a little club on a wed afternoon where she would buy tea & biscuits buy a raffle ticket etc and everyone used cash.

I'm in my 60's and every now and then, I get daughter to go to town and get me £200 in cash so I can pay the grasscutter and also money for birthday gifts etc and a taxi should I need it as some don't take cards here!

If they closed any branches here, the staff would be made redundant as the nearest branch is a 3 hour ferry trip plus a 55 mile journey to the nearest town so a transfer would not be possible.

Florence in the hebrides

I agree Maggie, I don't like the bank knowing what and how I spend my income and also given the amount of online fraud, is it any wonder why people do not want online banking?

It will be that we shall no longer be in control of our monies and then I think fraud will treble once we go cashless.

Yes money laundering will virtually disappear cash wise but will go online laundering in a more hi tech way.
Forcing an old man to have a debit card just to deposit some cash into his account is not right. I'm sure his bank could identify him by a secure means and lets face it, I think it was probably less than £100 so hardly money laundering.

You are dead right about Br gas Maggie as after my mum died, we read the meter, got an amended bill as it hadn't been read in 3 years and I paid it in full. Imagine several weeks later I get a letter from a firm of debt collectors saying Br Gas had sent my account to them for non payment!! I gave them hell over the phone and told them to sort it out.

Yes very quick to demand payment but if they had owed me would have been a different story.

Sad day if you go into a shop for a packet of crisps say for 40p and pay by card...very sad indeed.

Florence in the hebrides

My nearest bank is about 3 miles away.
I won't do online banking until the scammers are stopped.

The problem is, if they stop the use of cash, and make it so everyone has to use online banking, then 'they' have control of your money!

By 'they', I mean utility companies, landlords - anyone you pay by direct debit.
They may have made the mistake, but if they think you owe them money, the time will come where they can just take it from your account.

I've had issues with my rent - their system didn't 'acknowledge' a payment I made in 2009 - I had to pay it again. In 2022, the extra payment I made came to light.
Instead of apologising and giving me the money, the Council took it upon themselves to put it into my rent account, and lower my rent for 6 months.
I accidentally came across this, and asked who had given them 'power of attorney' over my finances!!
Ironically, in 2021, the Council's 'system' had been putting other people's payments on my account - but not mine. I allegedly owed them money and was threatened.
I stopped my Direct Debit. I had to point out their mistakes, then resumed the DD.

Another time, in 2022/2023, I kept getting threatening letters about unpaid Council Tax. I'd applied for Council tax reduction, as I'd retired, but was refused.
I'd cancelled my DD, as I knew I was entitled to a Council tax reduction, and once I knew the new payment, I would re-start it. I applied 3 times, and was refused,
I'd pay what I owed, then, the following month, was told I owed twice as much.
I got so fed up, I sent a snotty email to the head of Housing, Chief Executive of the council, my MP, and a local councillor, asking what was going on.
Suddenly I was in receipt of Council Tax Reduction, and they owed me money!

Utility bills - I left British Gas. Sent them meter readings.
They set me a gas bill, then an electricity bill, but the electricity bill also had the gas bill amount on it. :-S Not only that - these final bills were estimates - despite my sending them meter readings.
Anyone ever tried contacting British Gas??? I immediately stopped my DD.
Once you owe them money, they're quick enough to contact you!
However, they just sent me texts, and never answered my questions.
So, I sent them an invoice, detailing every moment of my time they had wasted.
This invoice was 3 times what I allegedly owed them.
It included admin payments (my time) and 'Danger money for using stepladder to read electricity meter,' because BG hadn't fixed the fairly new 'Smart Meter' they'd fitted for the previous tenant, despite my asking them to, and ' Money for embarrassment to old lady unable to get up after reading gas meter'.

I tried phoning again. The phone was answered immediately by 'head of finance', who apologised for their shortcomings. I was sent a revised (correct|) bill.

In all these cases, 'they' were in the wrong. Once we've lost power over our own money, stopping a Direct Debit will mean nothing, they'll be able to take our money, whether we owe it, or not.

My mother is legally blind therefore doesn't like using cash machines or online banking. Where she lives is very near to a major tourist area. Over the past couple of years EVERY bank has closed for miles around, so now you need to travel to the nearest town to use a real bank which is bad enough if you have a car awful if you don't like her.
She still like a little cash in the house for her various clubs which only take cash for their fees.
When the branches were open they always had a line up of people so all this there's no need for them rubbish doesn't wash, it's purely forcing you into online banking and cashless society.

Door to door an hour, shanks pony then a bus. It's a day out :-(

Bank of Scotland, Halifax & lloyds are set to close several branches and some are in rural locations where a lengthy drive is needed if you need to visit a branch and speak to someone face to face.

As we are using less cash and more cards to pay for things, less customers are using branches . many have online banking where you can operate your account, get a balance, change d/ds etc.

But there is still a number of customers who do not have an online account or the internet particularly the older generation. my mother went into her local branch every Monday and drew out what she needed for the week.

We did after 5 years persuade her to get a debit card incase she ran short of cash when doing her shopping but she hated using it.

I heard of a story recently where a man's wife had passed away and he went through her things etc and found quite a lot of coins. He bagged it up and took a friend with him to pay the money into his account.
The bank would not let him pay the money into his bank account because he did not have a debit card. He said he didn't want one and managed without one but still they refused to let him pay in the money.

The problem is when technology is working fine, its ok but when a problem occurred with the phone lines here, no shops could take any card payments and people were left unable to pay for their shopping and they wouldn't accept cheques.

Most had to abandon their shopping as the nearest cash machine was away in the town centre!!

I do wonder whether in very rural areas, couldn't they open the branch say for 2 days a week instead of 5? What will shops do with the cash they take say from tourists during the summer when takings are up if they can't bank it?

Also when someone passes away, its a lot easier going into a branch to sort things out rather than over the phone and online.

Anyone have a long way to travel to get to a bank?

Florence in the hebrides