Banque Populaire

[Janetw]

I recently chnaged our bank from CA(no surprises for guessing why !!!) to Banque Populaire who have been extremely helpful, however I am puzzled over one thing......they have insisted that we have a deposit account in which we must put 300 euros as a guarantee and then found out that we have a separate current account,why I wonder ?. They charge us 5.01 euros a month for this pack ' equipage' - is this normal practice or should we challenge it ? all I wanted was a 'normal' bank account with a cheque book !

Any advice gratefully received.
Janet Ward

[Mazan]

>they have insisted that we
>have a deposit account in
>which we must put 300
>euros as a guarantee and
>then found out that we
>have a separate current account,why
>I wonder ?.

Presumably in case you decide to write rubber cheques and skip off back to the UK.


>They charge
>us 5.01 euros a month
>for this pack ' equipage'
>- is this normal practice
>or should we challenge it

It is "normal" in that most banks now try and get you to take out these extra pay services, even to the point of not telling you that they are always optional. It is not "normal" in that if you don't want it then you needn't have it. Just complain.

[Tess]

I don't understand this one - I am with Banque Populaire (I presume you mean the Toulouse-Pyrenees one, I don't know if there's another!) and they didn't ask me for anything like this. I opened the account when I was in France, at my local branch, and put about 20 in it, I think - it certainly wasn't any more. Did you open yours in France, or from England? I wonder if that makes a difference? I kept only 20 in my account for ages, at least a year or more, although now I have added substantially more. Funnily enough, when I enquired about opening an account with CA (the English branch though) they wanted to charge me about 30 to open it, which is why I decided to look elsewhere.

Strange....

Tess