banking in Scotland

uptherebels

I'm going to edinburgh for a year to work,so I was looking around the net looking for info and I found a good few people saying to open up an account with a UK bank before going over/as soon as possible after arriving.
I have an account with AIB and as they have a branch in edinburgh I just wanted to know if there was any reason why this wouldnt suffice.
Thanks in advance.

suckslikeafox

Your AIB account is in euro but you'd be dealing in pounds over there so you should check if there will be conversion charges every time you make a transaction. If there will be but you're happy with AIB in general, just open a new account with them when you get over there

stepbar

BOI and the Post Office should be able to help you out.

BuffyBot

AiB's UK operations are pretty much seperate from the Irish . The UK banking system is pretty much seperate from the Irish one, so your Irish account really won't suffice at all. Plus AIB in the UK tends not to deal with average Joe Soap banking and tends to go for high-value personal customers and business accounts

There are plenty of local banks that can help you out, and offer you better deals anyway.

Blackjack

AIB's branch in Edinburgh is likely to only be a business branch.

I lived there for a while and I spoke to my Bank of Ireland Manager here, who helped to arrange an account with BOI Luton Branch. Never had a problem with them over there and found their service to be excellent. Could lodge sterling cheques to my EURO account here and funds would be posted to EURO same day.
Had to post any cheques to Luton but aside from that had no issues.

As regards other UK banks, I don't know what their service is like, apart from RBS who I've never heard anyone who's banked with them have a good word to say about them, and generally their service is supposedly muck.

uptherebels

thanks for the info