Level of service at retail banks.

Revolut. I moved everything bar mortgage to Revolut. handy out

AIB also seem to be closing branches.

What is also quite hopeless is the supposed availability of AIB transactions at post offices. That is great if you can find a handy post office as several near me in Dublin alone have shut.

The latest fun is to find an AIB branch which contains a cashier - remember them !

If you want a personal service, switch to your local credit union.

Branch closures and the reduction in services in the branches that stay open have nothing to do with low interest rates. The retail banks decided a long time ago that a lot of branch traffic involves interactions that make very little, if any, profit. The result is that, in branches that are open, the number of visible staff (and their competence) has noticeably diminished in the last 20 years.

Being blunt about it, a lot of elderly people go into banks and post offices purely for some human contact - 'to have a chat' as they tell Joe Duffy when they're bellyaching about their local PO or bank closing.

I think the switch to online banking has been absolutely brilliant. Everything done through an app, no reason to take time off work to stand in a queue or people wasting a cashier's time. Recently got a cheque to pay for something and was able to scan it in on my phone, was in my account almost instantly.

Admittedly I don't do anything complicated, just get paid in, then pay out. It might be different for those with a lot of needs. Maybe a different service for them that they could pay for with charges? For me, free banking, free app, suits me fine.

That doesn't make any sense.

".....and don't want the administration of checking transfers."

How much administration is involved in recording and lodging cheques?

Cheque books really are a thing of the past. I haven't had one for more than five years. I've gotten 2 or 3 CU drafts for the occasions when no other payment option was available. The OP of this thread was about counter service for cash, so the CUs are definitely a good option for those who want that kind of service. CU loan rates are generally in the same ballpark as bank loans. SHopping around is always a good idea.

That's easy to resolve by asking a sender to mention a unique reference number which you'd assign to the client. If they fail to do so, a payment gets unallocated and a secretary can send an email reminder or call the client explaining and asking for a remittance. If this isn't the process yet and you're still playing with cheque in this century, I'd highly recommend to create such a process and notify the clients. Some vendors are now charging extra for cheques. There're some bookkeeping software solutions which could make things easy, just need to avoid staying old-school and adapt to the technological changes. When I moved to Ireland 7 years ago I was surprised people still used cheques as in my country they're long gone or so unpopular that they are nearly forgotten. Banks even had login code cards not that long ago! We really need to speed up the pace in this country to become more up-to-date, and I'm not even talking about the whole infrastructure and innovations we're still behind... And I think the main reason is the people's mentality that all good the way things are while actually they aren't - we'll become an irrelevant and outdated country with such attitudes. With big IT companies in the state we should mentally be ready for innovations and technologies too... A bank cheque in this context simply sounds like an anecdote.