Cabo Roig, Orihuela Costa
July 12, 2013
Dear Editor,
It is the height of the season here on the Orihuela Costa. As always, people need to draw money from their Santander account, and even more so at this time of year.
So what do the ‘Brains of Spain’ at Santander Bank decide to do?
Firstly, they close down my local branch at La Fuente, Campoamor. Clients are told they should use the only branch now available on the Costa at Punta Prima, whilst the bank ‘looks for new premises’.
This branch has one cashier outlet and the whole premises is tighter than a sardine can.
In dire need of cash for the household bills (we are permanent residents at Cabo Roig), last Sunday morning we drove to Punta Prima to find a notice pasted on the RTM informing us it is broken and that our nearest outlets are Torrevieja and Quesada. As you may imagine, we were utterly enchanted with this information.
So, whilst the smug, self-satisfied, fat-bottomed Santander Bank senior staff in Madrid push pieces of paper around their expensive desks in air-cooled offices, tourists and residents here are sweating in the heat searching for somewhere to draw money.
Eventually we found a local ATM on the Cabo ‘Strip’ which charges a reasonable 60 cents per withdrawal, but limits withdrawal to a maximum of 250 euros. Not much good for paying the monthly rent.
Only someone suffering from the loss of most of their brain-cells decides to close a bank (a Bank!!!!) before searching for new premises. There are many other banks on the Cabo Roig ‘Strip’ (possibly one of the major centres for tourism on the Costa), but Santander Bank is not, and apparently never has been, one of them. This is supposed to be a major bank. If so, God help the minor ones.
Are these cretins in Santander Senior Management so devoid of common sense as to act in this way, or do they just regard those who put their money in their wretched little bank to be beneath their contempt? At a guess, it’s probably a mixture of both.
Stephen Treseder
