Oh boy, where do I start...

A friend set up a direct debit to pay her mortgage. Simple? In spite of giving them full name, account details etc, the Bank of Bermuda managed to debit the account of a relative who happens to have the same surname. When the relative questioned it, they didn't know where the money had gone and suggested she had forgotten spending it.

Butterfield had me go in to fetch chequebooks that I never use but must have and pay for in order to open a current account. They lost them. Three times. Three wasted journeys. Of course it takes an entire lunchbreak to do the simplest task, never mind something as complicated as picking up chequebooks. Changing an address took an entire morning. Cash - not a cheque, cash - I paid in took 15 days to 'clear' one time.

Then there's that thing where Butterfield like to send out everyone's mastercard on the same date. Hey, any card thief could have a field day.

OK, rant over... but it would be good to have the banks modernised a bit. And much as I am all for friendly service, do they really need to discuss Aunty's varicose veins (real example) when there is a line waiting all the way out of the door? (In case you're concerned, Aunty was taking some new medication that made her a new woman - seems she was doing very well).

my wife is told by her company on a friday afternoon that she is approved to go on a business trip that monday.  she is a bit anxious by this because she doesn't have any american money and we are bank of bermuda patrons and for some reason BOB is closed on the weekend (i guess i can't expect them to 'work' too hard).  I was like relax we can take money out of a machine and go to butterfield to exchange it.  Boy was i ever wrong on that one.  She goes in and they straight up tell her they are not doing it because she is not a butterfield banker.  She explained the situation and they didn't want to hear it, she was with the competition and they weren't doing it. I was waiting in the car when this happened(i was in a proper parking space, no double parking here).  When she came out and told me what went down i was pretty upset.  I mean i understand the process of being more compliant to your customers but to be out right punishing people for not being a part of your bank for a simple exchange of money is ridiculous.  so i decided to try and be smart, i went into the bank and claimed to be a tourist on the ship that took out too much money and needed to change it back before the ship departed.  She told me that she couldn't do it unless i provided my itinerary and proof of purchase.  I sat in the line for twenty minutes for her to tell me this, and the bank had more people in it now. I told her that it was on the ship and why would i carry that around.  She said that she wouldn't do it unless i showed it.  so when it was clear that i was getting no where, i decided to just leave(right after calling them the monkey's they were).  and it wasn't like we were trying to change a lot, this was for 500 dollars. 

If the money here isn't worth kindling off the island they should be WAY more accomodating to those that need to change their money to something REAL when they are leaving.

The best the lady could tell my wife was that she should've made prior arrangements to change the money or go to the stores to change it(ya like the stores will give up there american money).  The banks are only open during business hours, so you have to take a lunch off to go there, they take an EXTREMELY long time to do the most simple of tasks, and if the company waits to tell you at the final hour your approved to go somehere your sh1t out of luck.

I'm done now...i'm sure there are worse stories then mine.  I think it's high time something is done about this attrocious situation.

CC

Yes, we've had problems too.? My husband was adding me to his account,? the first time we went they said we needed my passport and immigration papers.? Ok, so I didn't have the immigration papers, so we came back, with the immigration papers and passport, and now they tell us we needed I needd a separate reference letter from my bank back home, this despite the fact the my husband had already provided them with the reference letter , when he opened up the account initially.? Too make a long story, even longer,? I didn't bother with the reference letter,? iand I actually didn't need it.? It took 3 visits to the bank, before we got to see someone to add myself on to the account. We left once as it was taking so long, (over 30 minutes) and apparently we were  the next in line!  ? ? And..... when we transferred some money from Canada, it took weeks for them to find it,  they'd find it, and then loose it again, which seems very strange, (maybe they were hoping we would just forget about it) 

It never used to be this way. When I started working at BNTB in 1983, ID was not even required or asked for. The ordeal we had to go through just to update that. Customers would tell us to call so n so in the whatsis dept..... "they know me". or they would pull out a polaroid of themselves and say "thats me". Now the banks have turned 'Corporate' and while that may be good for the business end, it creates a clinical atmosphere in the retail end.

RE: Corporate banking...As someone who worked EXTENSIVELY with the corporate side of banking as an accountant in the captive industry, let's just say both banks make more f*ck-ups than a porno movie.   I don't think I ever had a month go by where one of the accounts I was managing didn't have some major bank screw up: lost bank draft, misplaced wire, transposition error on the amounts, etc.   And getting those mistakes fixed was about as easy as skiing backwards uphill...

I hear HSBC taking over didn't help matters either.

Honestly..... the joke around is that they are calling Capital G the 'Old BNTB' cause thats who works there, but in my estimation, they got the good ones.

We tried to get Internet to the Desktop at this bank, or at least Internet e-mail. This, after real world companies had generally had access for 3 to 5 years. An older fellow in the group told the story about how he had the same problem trying to implement faxing to the bank, years after it had gone mainstream. The bank was still using teletype. I don't even know what that is, except for the tick-ticking in old movies! It was then that I realised that it would never change at the bank; it was the moment I gave up trying to change and resist.

Yup, from that day on, I took life easier. I started work at 9:00, had 90 minute lunches, and left at 5:00 sharp. Sometimes we'd discuss business over a drink at The Robin Hood in the middle of the afternoon. I stopped worrying about the screwed up environment at work, stopped trying futilely to change it, and thus had lots of time left over for years of valuable self-study. Except for the self-study part, I was becomng Bermudianised at a fast pace. I kept this sh**ty attitude until the day I was able to change over to a real job and put my normally good work ethics to use again.