Several persons continue to complain about doing transactions with the commercial bank, ScotiaBank. One of the major complaints surround changing cheques at the bank. Over the weeks several complaints to this publication were rooted in bank’s “excuse” as it refuses to change cheques if the customer is not an account holder.
One person who wishes to remain anonymous told this publication that he ventured to ScotiaBank’s Robb Street branch to change a cheque from an account holder with that bank.
“It was a ScotiaBank cheque, the teller said I needed to have an account there for the Bank to change it,” the man said.
He had travelled from the interior where he works and was paid by his employer with the cheque. The man explained that he needed to change the cheque to attend to his needs in the city before he headed back to work in the interior, “Now I had to go to another bank to change a ScotiaBank cheque since the Bank refused the change their cheque, because I am not a customer,” the man said as he said this caused a major inconvenience to his life, “Can you imagine a bank doing this in a pandemic, now I had to go to another place because of this, when I should be minimising contact with as many people as possible.”
Another man who also asked for anonymity accused the bank of being duplicitous as he said that he was able to do a transaction at ScotiaBank without having an account there. He said that went he returned to change another cheque given to them by an account holder, he was told the Bank could not do the transaction since he was not account holder, “Look, you cannot even get to ask these banks nothing, they do not answer their phones for simple queries, I’ve have been calling ScotiaBank and Republic Bank for weeks and no one answers, imagine we are in a pandemic and you are forced out of your house to join lines in the bank,” the man said.
One senior banking official told us that the “practice” of refusing to cash cheques unless the person is an account holder “is not a proper banking practice.”
“We are aware that the management of Scotia Bank was spoken to about this before. They are saying they do this to reduce numbers in the bank during COVID-19 pandemic but we don’t see the sense in that.. it is your cheque at the end of the day.”
This publication has tried repeatedly to get a comment from ScotiaBank, calls to its numbers remain unanswered.