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Questions at the bank


Penny29

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Hi,

We are having a lot of work done on our house at the moment entailing much (soooooo much) cheque writing, but recently there was a delay until our new cheque book arrived so we had to draw E2000 out of our French bank a/c via the cash point over several days in order to pay various delivery drivers when they turned up with materials etc (the drivers mostly can't take payment by CB).

Fine, we thought, no problem.

Then our bank started phoning us - was it correct we had drawn X amount of cash out on X days?

Fine, we thought - they are obviously security minded and are making sure that our cards have not been stolen (our French bank a/c is normally very inactive).

But then there were more questions - why did we draw cash, what for, who did we pay, where did we get the money from in the first place, were we working? (This despite the fact that we have always promptly written to the bank's HQ each time we have transferred cash from the UK explaining how we realised the sum in the first place).

I accept that the banks have to be careful about both security and money laundering but I have to say that I found all these questions extremely intrusive. We have nothing to hide - everything we pay out is carefully recorded and receipted but I do feel that the bank is merely our money storage device (expensive in charges too) and that it is our own business what we do with our money - cash, cheque or CB!

This, combined with their monthly charges is making me seriously consider changing banks but I just wondered if this is, perhaps, normal for ALL French banks. If it is then there is little point in changing - apparently one must be regarded as a potential criminal/launderer if one dares to draw cash!

Has anyone else experienced this?

Penny
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Penny - I don't know if this is relevant : We have a limit of 400 euro on what we can draw from the machine. If we need any more cash we go into the bank and ask the assistant who makes up a special card for us, no questions asked. We have never given the origins of money deposited. We are with Credit Agricole. Pat.
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I have never been asked for the origins of credits or to account for the use of cash; I use very little cash these days but did withdraw similar sums over the counter before I became resident; they did once ask me to let them know 24 hours in advance if I was going to withdraw more than a given sum, otherwise they can end up short of cash themselves.
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