Joe Duggan (Reporter)
IT should have been a fun early-life experience for her young son Oliver.
The raiding of his piggy bank now burgeoning with coins and the deposit in his bank account.
But Alba Thomas’s local branch of La Caixa hadn’t read the script.
In an astounding own-goal, officials at the Secar de la Real bank refused point blank to take it.
“First they said they didn’t want to count the coins. Then they said they ‘didn’t want it’, the 24-year-old told the Olive Press.
So now, the Mallorca mum, who dates an English businessman, is vowing to shut the one-year-olds account and put the €36 into a bank that ‘does care’.
“I felt really bad because I am now unable to save money for my son. We wanted to give him the money when he was 18, as a nest egg.
“Yet bank staff made me feel his money didn’t have any value, and I should be ashamed to have brought it,” she continued.
After an uncomfortable wait, she was finally told that under new rules, bank staff are only allowed to accept coin deposits from restaurants and shops.
This is despite handing in another pile of coins in the very same branch a month ago when, after bagging up the money and counting it herself, bank staff sent it off to be checked and deposited into the child’s account.
“What has changed? It’s still money,” added Alba, who has had an account at the same branch for eight years, while her mother has banked with La Caixa for 50 years.
“The only reason I opened the account for Oliver, which obviously has charges, was so I could save this money for him.”
Staff at the branch insisted they were unable to talk to the press and referred us to the head office, which failed to come back before publication.
According to Bank Of Spain rules, banks have the right to ‘deny the instantaneous count of change if it exceeded 50 coins’.
“In the case of shops or restaurants, it is all agreed in the contract’s conditions,” a spokesperson told the Olive Press.
Close the account of these arrogant social incompetents.
All Banks have a rule about coins, some require you to place in special plastic holders supplied by the Bank and as an owner of a shop it was a chore to do before going to the Bank. That said how many times would you like to be the person waiting behind someone while the staff member counts the coins!!! Have a bit of consideration.
Person attempts to put money into a bank. What next? Whilst in a bank in London I noticed a new paying-in machine. I watched as the local “Big Issue” salesman emptied his pockets of all manner of change and then got a receipt, went to the counter, and got paid in notes. Easy. It’s clearly La Caixa that are incompetent here.