Metro Bank

A quick puff for Metro Bank, following my first ever transaction with them at their Epsom branch.

Lots of friendly staff who claim not to mind the long opening hours.

More important on this occasion, a state of the art coin counter, which will turn your coins into bank notes in very short order, with very few rejects, in my case about seven, or much less than 1% of the total, of which four were foreign. No need to be a customer. Far superior to the offering in Sainsbury's where they charge 8% or so - even if you are donating the coin to charity - and somewhat superior to that in HSBC - which suffers from poor availability of machines. See, for example, references 1 and 2.

My only complaint was the poor choice of charities to which one could donate, so the notes alternative was popped into an HSBC machine over the road - another first in that I have not used their cash deposit machine before - and it now wending its way to Mencap. Clever machine: you just stick your card in the slot, drop the money in the hopper and the job is done. It counts up the notes and puts the answer into your account. No more need to fill out any forms. But would it still be clever if you were doing hundreds of notes rather than half a dozen or so? And then, what would happen if you thought that the machine had got it wrong?

PS: they also appear to offer interest on long term deposits, again a better offering than HSBC.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=7.9%2Blooks%2Bbetter%2Bthan%2B8.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/piggy-bank-machines.html.