Ulster Bank – Dun Laoghaire

This comes purely from this branch, but I found them to be the most unhelpful bank branch I have dealt with in Ireland so far.
I am finally getting around to opening up an Irish bank account so I have been shopping around and looking for the institution which offers the least fees etc. I decided to go with Ulster Bank, mainly because they used to offer free accounts (not any more apparently) and my boyfriend banks there.
So down I march with my pint of blood, notarized promise to hand over my first born son, and prepared to do the hokey pokey, which what is apparently required to open an Irish bank account, (seriously, I have lived in four other countries and have never had this much of a problem opening a bank account in any of them) only to be told that the only thing they could accept is my passport, none of the other documentation, including my GNIB card, and a statement from my University as proof of residence and my letter containing my pps#, which also has my address on it and there for I couldn’t open a bank account. Mind you, this was told to me by the girl at customer service who had to look on their website to see what acceptable forms of id.
When I asked if I could talk to someone in charge of opening accounts, she politely told me I could make an appointment and come back. WTF??? I have to make an appointment to talk to someone? Ummmmm… ok?
So off I trudged, feeling confused and defeated, still with my pint of blood, future first born son, and ready to dance.

In recent months, I became dissatisfied with my previous bank, so I looked around and decided Ulster Bank satisfied my requirements best; decent, secure online banking and a reliable debit card which doesn’t take any fuss to get. Ulster Bank even give you a Visa Debit card, rather than Laser card, so it works online and abroad and did I mention online? Basically everything I always wanted to do with my previous bank’s crappy Laser card, but never could. It turns out though, jumping banks after 10+ years of history is not as trivial as I thought. :-/
4 months later and I’ve finally jumped through all the hoops so I have a bank account which I can manage without going near a branch every other week. Why so long? Part of it was me being cautious and slow to transition my various financials over, but mainly it was the branch staff.
It turned out they goofed the paperwork early on and I ended up with a «Step account», basically the sort of account you give a 12 year old, which can’t have useful features like a cheque book (for those awkward old world handymen) or an overdraft (useful to solve sub week cashflow issues). Asking multiple people both in person and via phone, I kept getting conflicting answers «yes, we can convert that account you» to «no, you’ll need to open a new account». Eventually I was getting told I’d need a new account more often, which seems quite bureaucratic to me, but whatever, it is a bank.
I filled out a second round of paperwork, and then things got worse for ~3 months. The branch staff I was dealing with wouldn’t return phone calls or make an appointment with me to come in and work out what the actual problem was. Eventually, having been away for a few weeks decided to I give it one last go with different branch staff. 10 minutes later, I was leaving the branch with a new account number and the cogs were turning to add all the features I needed.
So, yet another reminder why I hate having to deal with banks in person. Very few of the staff take pride in their work, and the good ones are only ever found through sheer luck. Thankfully, I’m now back in the effective nirvana provided by online banking and debit cards. Overall, I give Ulster Bank 4 stars for the online banking, the SMS alerts and a very useful debit card, but this branch gets 2 just two stars for giving me the run around for so long and for no reason.