{"id":196,"date":"2006-02-17T22:08:54","date_gmt":"2006-02-17T11:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2006\/02\/18\/an-ongoing-review-of-bendigo-bank\/"},"modified":"2007-09-10T18:38:09","modified_gmt":"2007-09-10T08:38:09","slug":"an-ongoing-review-of-bendigo-bank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2006\/02\/17\/an-ongoing-review-of-bendigo-bank\/","title":{"rendered":"An Ongoing Review of Bendigo Bank"},"content":{"rendered":"
The target audience for this post is me<\/em>. Please, forgive me my indulgence. I”ll start with the back story for the readers who aren’t me.<\/div>\n

For many years, I banked with the ANZ. I didn’t have particularly unusual or stringent banking needs. I had a typical personal account. Despite that, my time there was characterised by an unacceptably high level of errors and bureaucratic run-arounds. <\/p>\n

Having being a regular customer of six different branches, I did notice that it was a branch-specific problem. I found that odd. Some branches consistently mucked me around. Other branches greeted me by name, processed my transactions accurately, and made high-quality recommendations to save me bank fees.<\/div>\n

Eventually, I moved to a location where the nearest branch of the ANZ was consistently hopeless, and I had no convenient alternative branches, so I closed my bank account and moved on.<\/p>\n

\n

I dislike fumbling for change, or jingle with coins everywhere I walk. So, I tend to dump the coins from my pocket at the earliest convenience. Every now and again, I count and bag the coins by denomination, and deposit them at the bank. When you add various club activities I am involved with that involve collecting money, I tend to collect a fair number of coins this way. Not as many as a retail business, but more than the average person.<\/p>\n

So one of my criteria for a bank is that they accept coins… in bags, not coin rolls (I don’t have the knack for making them.)… without rolling their eyes at me… and they don’t make me wait while they count them (either they have weighing machines or they count them later.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I suspected all the large banks were going to be similar to the ANZ, so I tried a Credit Union: Credit Union Australia (nee Metropolitan Credit Union).<\/p>\n

Overall, this was a refreshing change. Despite my eagle-eyed auditing of every statement (learned by bitter ANZ experience), the number of errors they made was acceptably low. I rarely had to wait more than a minute in a queue. They accepted the bagged coins without complaint. (Well, when they got to know me, they would make a few remarks, but they were good natured.)<\/p>\n

However, it was not to last. They closed my local branch. They do have an arrangement with the National Bank, but the local National branch has queues that never end. (Never, ever. I timed it.<\/a>) They give me exasperated looks when I try to deposit coins.<\/p>\n

Time to try a new financial institution. There’s a new branch of the Bendigo Bank nearby. It’s a “community bank” which may mean I get better service than a big bank. I don’t want to move my accounts, holus-bolus, until they have proven themselves. This post is an ongoing thread to remind myself of the experiences I have with a Beta Test of the bank over the next three months or so, so I can decide whether it is worth the pain of the full transition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a new branch of the Bendigo Bank nearby. I don’t want to move my accounts, holus-bolus, until they have proven themselves. This post is an ongoing thread to remind myself of the experiences I have with a Beta Test of the bank over the next three months or so, so I can decide whether it is worth the pain of the full transition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-based-on-a-true-story","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}