Britline brilliant assistance...

[Braco]

We have banked with Britline for almost two years and are happy enough with their service.

 

As with most banks they have some irritating systems and processes. One example is that they insisted on sending internet banking login details to our French home.

[idun]

Firstly I speak fluent 'bank', as in everyday banking, but I will never ever understand 'banque'.

Re the CA, my personal dealings as treasurer of an assoc where I was obliged to use them was where I found them lacking in all depts. Inefficient and rude actually and loathe to do what I consider their jobs. But that was in the Rhone Alpes and this is a regional bank we are talking about.

I find it incredible that a tirade has not been launched here against french banks and not NormanH. I frankly have no idea as to how or when they even make an attempt to balance their accounts properly. The things I could say about personal experiences and what has happened to friends would be as big as a book.

My current bank is not so bad and that is the best I have said about any french bank I have had dealings with.

[pachapapa]

[quote user="WJT"]

I just spoke to them and they said that they would "try" to contact me if this happened but I guess there are no guarantees that the same thing wouldn't happen with them. When I spoke to CCSO he couldn't even see that it was declined but I guess it is handled in an automatic fashion. Not a great fan of banks and bankers at the moment anyway. [:@]

For those of you with Credit Agricole I didn't realise everything was done on the internet. What do you do if you want to get cash for example? That is the only thing I can think of off hand that you would need to go to your local branch for really but I am not sure if I would feel comfortable not having access to a live person locally. [8-)]

Having said that what good have they done for me in this situation!

[/quote]

Crédit Agricole have over the years discouraged the handling of cash by tellers. for a while they allowed 4 over the counter cash withdrawals a month as things stand at the moment, for the Charente Maritime-Deux Sèvres division of the British Bank with the english speaking niche service, there is now a unique charge of € 1,90 for the withdrawal of a sum of cash at the counter. The periodic payment of this sum may be compared with the annual charge for Crédit Agricole issued MasterCard of € 31,44. The cash dispenser can also be used to deposit cash in banknotes; an envellope for reception of the notes is disgorged from the machine during the process. The tariffs mentioned were last updated on the 1st Jan 2011.

[cooperlola]

[quote user="idun"] I find it incredible that a tirade has not been launched here against french banks and not NormanH. [/quote]Why?

The thread was about good service from a French bank - as you say, not all that common in an expensive and bureaucracy-heavy banking system.  Norman, in his inimatable and lovable style, objected to said bank's pandering to immigrants.  I don't know about everybody else, but it was this patronising and insulting stance that got my goat, not CA Britline who, for a French bank, I find quite helpful, in contrast to the bank I started out with when I first came over here.

I'll happily join in a new thread about the rubbish French banking system if you like, Idun, but we'd better not do it here because Mr H objects vehemently to thread drift and is not afraid to have a go at anybody (apart from himself, of course) who veers off topic.

[WJT]

Cooperlola, I am in Dordogne so no where near a local branch. To be honest I have had very little need to take out larger amounts of money but I have had the need and in fact needed to do this a few times when CCSO messed up with my credit/debit card and I didn't want to use funds from the UK so I had to take out cash in advance for monthly shopping etc..

I am embarrassed to say I know nothing about Credit Agricole. They do sound like a smallish bank but forgive me if I'm wrong. [:$] That is the one thing we liked about CCSO is that they are part of HSBC.

[Alan Zoff]

C-A seems to operate a bit like a franchise, all branches sharing a common name but split into regional groups which are independent of one another.

[pachapapa]

[quote user="WJT"]

Cooperlola, I am in Dordogne so no where near a local branch. To be honest I have had very little need to take out larger amounts of money but I have had the need and in fact needed to do this a few times when CCSO messed up with my credit/debit card and I didn't want to use funds from the UK so I had to take out cash in advance for monthly shopping etc..

I am embarrassed to say I know nothing about Credit Agricole. They do sound like a smallish bank but forgive me if I'm wrong. [:$] That is the one thing we liked about CCSO is that they are part of HSBC.

[/quote]

The nature of the bank referred to by Norman and myself was exquisitely defined in the earlier post///

Yesterday, 14:08
Russethouse Joined on 23/08/2004 Forum Moderator Posts 12,526	Re: Britline brilliant assistance...
	Yes, unrealistic as it may be and even though a british bank thought they could make a viable business out of providing a service for people who have less than perfect French....of course Norman is free to think they are all wrong. 'Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity'

[pachapapa]

[quote user="Alan Zoff"]C-A seems to operate a bit like a franchise, all branches sharing a common name but split into regional groups which are independent of one another.[/quote]

Franchise is a bit of a loose word but indeed each area has a degree of marketing independence. The Credit Agricole Charente-Perigord due to the number of english speaking residents has a more prominent english communication profile.

http://www.ca-charente-perigord.fr/english-speaking-customer.html

[Simon-the-censored]

WJT - a couple of things to help you out....

1. Cash Dispenser Withdrawls - CA

You can take out much more than 300€ from CA dispensers. Britline will fix limits for you dependant on your circumstances. They do however have a limit on cheque withdrawls at another branch !

2. Credit Agricole is the WORLD's 4th largest bank (France's 2nd largest) in terms of assets as at Sep 2010 - following BNP, RBS and HSBC.. BNP Paribas is in fact the current holder of the title ''biggest bank in the world'' (and France!).

Simon :-)

[cooperlola]

Wiki disagrees with you re its ranking, but this is their take:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cr%C3%A9dit_Agricole

[idun]

Cooperlola, I really think it is not a good thing to over egg the praises of french banking. Because even getting good service 'once' does not make it good nor will it ever.

[Simon-the-censored]

cooperlola - the Wiki info is out of date - only up to 2008!

Take a look at this :

http://www.gfmag.com/tools/best-banks/10619-worlds-50-biggest-banks.html

(sorry - can't do links - no idea why!)

Simon

[cooperlola]

[quote user="idun"]it is not a good thing to over egg the praises of french banking. .[/quote]My point was merely that this is not what went on here.   It was praise for a specific bank in specific circumstances which Mel gave, not the system - and others who have had equally good experiences agreed with him.  Given that said bank has come in for a lot of stick on this forum in the past, is a bit of contrasting positive comment so dreadful?  Although I realise that bad experiences with the French system can leave one pretty bitter and twisted at times, why must we be automatically negative about it?

I doubt whether there are many on the forum who prefer the French banking system to the British one - language barrier or not.

 

Thanks, Simon.

[Lollie]

But Barclays do!!!!! When I worked there before leaving for France, anyone speaking another language registered the language with the call centre so as to take calls if required in the language they could speak.

[pachapapa]

@WJT sometimes the regions in france can seem divorced from their department names; the department names generally contain the name of a river as is the case of Dordogne. However the older pre-revolution names are still often used for example Poitou, Berry, Quercy, Périgord, etc.  Crédit Agricole use Périgord instead of Dordogne. The Périgord comes in four colours green in the north, white in the middle, black in the south east and pink in the south west for the homosexuels and lesbians around Eymet.[:)]

http://www.ca-charente-perigord.fr/english-speaking-customer.html

So the link above is the one for dordognyshire.

[Will]

So, then, our CA bank is named after pre-revolution Normandie (which surely included most of England), and our dept is the River Manche? Now that's quite some river... I think I'd prefer the neighbouring dept, the River Calvados, that would be much more useful.

This is definitely the place to come for rubbish facts about France :)

[cooperlola]

[quote user="Will"], the River Calvados, [/quote]I'll be there in the morning.  Hic.[B]

[WJT]

Thanks for the link Pachapapa. I think I will stay with CCSO for the minute. I feel that what happened to us could have happened with CA as well.

Not that the charges are much but I would be interested to know how they compare. Last January CCSO started charging €2.50 a month for a current account and I think it is about €48 for a carte blue. Does this compare to CA or other banks for that matter? I am embarrassed to say that I don't have a clue what the UK bank charges. [:$]

[NormanH]

[quote user="cooperlola"]

The Oxford English Dictionary says:

Immigrant:  A person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country

Expatriate : A person who lives outside their native country

Sorry, Norman, but I'm inclined to believe it in preference to you who appear to have made up the definitions to suit your argument (such as it is.)  The only difference is the "permanence" bit which is not necessarily applied to the expat but which is not, ipso facto, excluded either.

[/quote]

That is a fairly useless distinction, but it does support my idea of the difference between the permanence of you and I who are immigrants, and the temporary nature of an 'ex-pat' which I still maintain for semantic reasons is some one 'ex-patrié' ..that u ssent abroad

n its broadest sense, an expatriate is any person living in a different

country from where he or she is a citizen.

 In common usage, the term is

often used in the context of professionals sent abroad by their

companies, as opposed to locally hired staff (who can also be

foreigners). The differentiation found in common usage usually comes

down to socio-economic factors, so skilled professionals working in

another country are described as expatriates, whereas a manual labourer

who has moved to another country to earn more money might be labelled an

'immigrant'

see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expatriate

[pachapapa]

[quote user="Will"]So, then, our CA bank is named after pre-revolution Normandie (which surely included most of England), and our dept is the River Manche? Now that's quite some river... I think I'd prefer the neighbouring dept, the River Calvados, that would be much more useful. This is definitely the place to come for rubbish facts about France :)[/quote]

quote  generally contain the name of a river end quote some lucky departments contain two rivers for example Deux-Sèvres; the Sèvres Niortaise and the Sèvre Nantaise; Niort are towns through which the rivers flow. Only 67 of the departments contain the name of a river establishing the generality of the premise; the remaining departments use the names of mountain ranges but not exclusively; the territory of belfort is something of an exception. More rubbish facts about france.[:D]

[pachapapa]

[quote user="WJT"]

Thanks for the link Pachapapa. I think I will stay with CCSO for the minute. I feel that what happened to us could have happened with CA as well.

Not that the charges are much but I would be interested to know how they compare. Last January CCSO started charging €2.50 a month for a current account and I think it is about €48 for a carte blue. Does this compare to CA or other banks for that matter? I am embarrassed to say that I don't have a clue what the UK bank charges. [:$]

[/quote]

There appears not to be a listing of the tariffs in english but the link to the pdf file below gives details of the tariffs for the year 2011; note the tariffs are not the same for the differing regional groupings. If you pop into one of the branches they will give you a pamphlet with the information.

http://www.ca-charente-perigord.fr/Vitrine/ObjCommun/Fic/CharentePerigord/objets/tarifs/documents/TarifsPart01012011.pdf

So lucky to have the name of a river & aregion all together.[;-)]

 

[WJT]

For some reason Pachapapa the link with the fees doesn't work for me but I noticed on the site they show in the below link branches all over France, there are quite a few in my area. I take it this is different to the Britline that is associated to a Credit Agricole in Normandy I believe that don't have branches and are solely internet based? [8-)]

http://www.ca-charente-perigord.fr/agence.html

 

[pachapapa]

[quote user="WJT"]

For some reason Pachapapa the link with the fees doesn't work for me but I noticed on the site they show in the below link branches all over France, there are quite a few in my area. I take it this is different to the Britline that is associated to a Credit Agricole in Normandy I believe that don't have branches and are solely internet based? [8-)]

http://www.ca-charente-perigord.fr/agence.html

 

[/quote]

You probably have an outdated version of Adobe Reader which is the most common software for reading PDF files.

Available at

http://www.filehippo.com/download_adobe_reader/

Correct Britline is part and parcel of CA Normandie.

[Chancer]

After experiencing customer service Picard style several times I now I keep my involvement with LCL to an absolute minimum, I pay nothing in fees, they recieve my Assurance Maladie remboursements and occasionally some cash that I pay in after withdrawing it from their distributeur using my Nationwide card to keep a sufficient balance for my only prélévement to Free.fr.

I take great delight in how much it costs them to send a statement every month to my UK address as "l'ordinateur dit Non! Vous n'habitez pas en France!"  despite my cheque book having my French address, and also all the anti-money laundering letters and forms they send me from January onwards wanting to know the ins and outs of le cul d'un canard, when I tire of them I go into the branch and make them photocopy the exact same documents that they did the year before which seems to placate them.

I will however soon have need of proper Frenxh banking services and as all the others here adopt the French/Picard service model of treating customers somewhere between English food and something brown and smelly on their semelles I am indeed considering using CA Britline.

My reasoning is that if they have even the minutest comprehension of what an English person considers to be a reasonable way to do business than they will be streets ahead of any of the banks around here and also that that they should be encouraged to speak in their native tongue occasionally

[WJT]

Thanks Pachapapa.

I am with Chancer on this. If I were to change French banks I think I would change to Britline. However, I still don't like the idea that they don't have a local branch. Even if I don't need it I still like to know the option is there.