[quote=“finley”]Cobblers, superking. The OP wasn’t making any reference to his home culture - but yes, he was just turning up “with an expectation of how things should work based on stuff they made up in their heads”. And WTF is wrong with that? There is no logical problem with what he was asking. Banks SHOULD be expected to instantly produce a copy of whatever information they hold about you, including your real-time balance, on the spot (assuming you can show proper ID, of course). The entire financial system depends on us having faith in banks as competent entities.
If the people at your bank are incompetent, paper-shuffling jobsworths, that really doesn’t prove anything. I can turn up at my UK bank with my ATM card and a passport and have an official statement printed. It’ll cost me 5 pounds, but they’ll do it. Alternatively I can log into internet banking and do the same thing myself for free.[/quote]
I agree that a bank should be able to facilitate the provision of a statement detailing your name, address, account number and account transactions, but you cannot simply arrive and expect one to be printed out and handed to you. In the UK you can turn up and get a statement of your account, but it will not have your home address printed on it. In fact, most banks will not provide any sort of posted monthly statement any more. You have to specifically request for these things to be posted to you. I went through this process last year and it took various trips to the bank, form filling and then phone calling. That was with HSBC.
There is nothing wrong with turning up with your own expectations, but 9 times out of 10 you will leave disappointed.