Banks, again; foreign currency capability

[Mark Carroll]

I live in Scotland. Today I tried to pay a US dollar cheque in at
Nationwide only to find that their policy changed and they can no longer
accept them. This is pretty useless to me; apparently globalization is
happening backward in their world. I was in the US last month and will
be again next month, so maybe I can arrange something there, but I'll
also just switch to a normal bank. I don't have much money; most
basically I just need a free/cheap current account that lets me deposit
such cheques, though a bonus would be if they could also issue US dollar
cheques. (Back when I were a lad, banks like HSBC could issue such
cheques without missing a beat.) It'd also be nice if their online
banking weren't execrable.

While my impression of banks tends to be that they're like rental car
companies -- they vary, but mostly they're all a bit rubbish while
mostly sufficing -- of course I'm interested in hearing of any
outstandingly good or bad deals at the moment. It's also useful if they
actually have branches so I can go and have an actual human sort out
issues when necessary.

I thought I'd post here to check, though, is this inability to accept US
dollar cheques a wider pattern? Or do I still have pretty much my choice
of high street banks? (I don't mind if they take several weeks to decide
if a cheque from the United States Treasury is credit-worthy (!) --
after all, I'm used to Nationwide taking days to clear cheques from
other Nationwide account holders!) Or, other things being equal, are
there any other patterns of which I should be aware that might influence
which banks I should consider or avoid?

-- Mark

[Mark Carroll]

Post by Mark Carroll
I thought I'd post here to check, though, is this inability to accept US
dollar cheques a wider pattern? Or do I still have pretty much my choice
of high street banks?

The big ones don't seem to do too well with customer satisfaction
these days. To their credit, Clydesdale managed to get back to me
on a Saturday afternoon to tell me that they do accept foreign
cheque deposits, so my current plan is to drop in and see them.

-- Mark

[Mark Carroll]

Post by Mark Carroll
The big ones don't seem to do too well with customer satisfaction
these days. To their credit, Clydesdale managed to get back to me
on a Saturday afternoon to tell me that they do accept foreign
cheque deposits, so my current plan is to drop in and see them.

Indeed I did, and I have now deposited the first US dollar cheque with
them. So far, so good.

-- Mark