Money for Nothing

Nostalgia – a country often visited, seldom bettered.

It’s nice to reminisce, isn’t it? Thirty years ago I lived in London and I still fondly recall being told by my bank that it would take up to five working days for my salary cheque to clear. Imagine. It seems so quaint now, doesn’t it? But this was a time of handwritten ledgers, quills and powdered wigs – no high speed broadband online transactions in those pre-computer days, so you had to make allowances.

Thank God for the 21st century, says you. Ha! I now live in Ireland. Can anyone please tell me why, in the name of all that’s holy, it recently took eight days – I’ll repeat that for the hard of reading – EIGHT DAYS for one Irish bank to transfer a couple of hundred yo yos from my account to another of my accounts with a different Irish bank? It was an online transaction that took me all of a minute to perform and yet my money was lost somewhere in the ether for over a week. I can picture the scenario:-

Tuesday – I click the send button on my computer to start the transfer process. A message zings across the airwaves at hyperspeed, finally arriving at the Galway branch of Bank One three days later, having stopped off for a chat and a cappuccino in sundry branches across the realm – Ranelagh, Carlow, Enniskillen and Limerick maybe.

Friday – Mr. Manager in Galway, having received my request, instructs an underling that Mr. Oldblodger requires a sum of money to be sent forthwith to a branch of another bank in County Leitrim. Underling rushes down to the vault to withdraw my two hundred groats. He saddles up his company vehicle, a.k.a. ‘Nellie the pony’, hops into the stirrups and rides like the wind (a very light breeze) up the N17.

Monday – Underling arrives in County Leitrim, having three times over-nighted in fields along the way, his first sleepover being just outside Dunmore, a rather drab little town in County Galway. [I shouldn’t say that really as I’ve never spent any time in Dunmore, merely driven through it on many occasions. It’s unfair to criticise a town based on impressions received through a windscreen at thirty miles an hour, but what the heck! It looks drab to me. I always get the urge to stop the car at the sign at the entrance to the town and paint the word “Could’ve” in front of the word “Dunmore”.]

Anyway, I digress. Underling has two further sleepovers on his marathon journey – one at Castlerea, another at Frenchpark – where he spends a little time researching his family’s genealogy whilst the pony gorges on lush green grass. He finally trots up to Bank Two in Ballinamore where he hands over the moneybag to Mrs. Manager, who puts it into the pocket of her pinafore and immediately forgets its very existence.

Wednesday afternoon – Mrs. Manager, searching her person for a Werther’s Original, discovers a moneybag in the pocket of her pinafore. It contains a note from Mr. Manager in Bank One stating that the money herein belongs to Mr. Oldblodger and that it should be placed in his Bank Two account without delay, lest he should find himself fundless and starving. Mrs. Manager is startled into action and she instructs one of her underlings, following a lovely long chat about her daughter’s success at the local Irish Dancing competition on the weekend, to enter the details of Mr. Oldblodger’s money transfer into the shiny plastic flashing box thing on the counter.

Wednesday evening – Mr. Oldblodger attempts, for the forty seventh time since starting the process, to withdraw some cash from a hole-in-the-wall so that he can buy some food and thereafter recover from malnutrition. Lo and behold, two twenties emerge from the cash machine and all is well.

Come on people! Transferring money electronically in this day and age should be instantaneous. It's not as if any cash actually changes hands, just zeroes and ones. Why do I have the uneasy feeling that banks are somehow profiting from these ridiculous transfer delays?

Cheerio,
oldblodger