Banks in Ireland are useless. They just are. And it is not only the bureaucracy I am talking about.

Yesterday I tried to transfer money from my account to another one. Something I would describe as the most basic function a bank should provide. Well, I spent an hour struggling and failed. I can created a standing order, or I can make SWIFT transaction to my account in Austria, but can I transfer Money to a different account in Ireland? Apparently not! I could transfer money to an account of the same Institute, but not for example: from the Bank of Ireland to Bank of Scotland in Ireland. The person on the counter suggested that I get the money cash and bring it to a branch of the Bank of Scotland. But where is the next branch?

I quite simply couldn’t believe that, so I tried to find out why? The answer I got was even more surprising. According to the person behind the counter all banks in Ireland agreed to not do bank to bank transactions over the counter because of too many complains. They will only do that if the request was entered electronically, in other words use Internet banking. This wouldn’t be that bad, if there Internet Banking solution wasn’t entirely useless. First of all there is no concept of a TAN list. All you have are two 6 digit pin numbers. One to identify your login and the other one is used as a sort of password, you are asked about some random digits out of your number. And to make things save, there is a random question, which either asks you for the last four digits of your account number or your birthday. Over all, not very secure the whole thing. But that doesn’t matter, because I am complaining not about the security, I am complaining about it being useless. You can not use Internet banking to transfer money to any account, oh no, you only can transfer money to certain pre set up accounts. Some are set up by default, like ESB or Eircom other, so called third party accounts, can be set up manually. Not on the counter of course. One has to call a phone service, which starts by asking to enter your account number. Believe it or not, but I do not know my account number. For some reasons an account number is something secret over here, it is not the number printed on your cash card. I have written it down somewhere, but I don’t know it by heart and it is nowhere on display. So I went back in the branch and asked them for my account number. Back on the phone I was asked a number of questions: Where do I live? What was the last amount of money I got from an ATM? And so on. At the end they asked me for my PIN. But unfortunately was the PIN registered by my girl friend. Well, right, but we share the account and I have full access permissions as well. Still, she has to make the phone call personally. Guess what, my better half is in Brussels right now. Okay, can I get a PIN for my own then? Sure. Can I do it directly at the Branch? No. The PIN will arrive per post within the next view work days.

Unfortunately I only had the sort code and account number I wanted to transfer money too, if I just had IBAN and BIC, I could have made a SWIFT transaction. At the end I gave up.

This is ridiculous! A bank that can’t do transactions is like a grocery shop that will not sell you a chocolate bar over the counter. Oh, you can order it now and we will send it to you within the next weekdays. Or you can bye an abo and get one chocolate bar a month. Or you can buy it here and pick it up at a different shop. But unfortunately, you can not buy one here and get it right now. It doesn’t make sense; neither does a bank that can’t do transactions.