Nine years ago I wrote an article1 for the Irish Times recounting my travails, having moved from Dublin to Armagh to work for the Centre for Cross Border Studies, when I tried to open a cross-border bank account, buy a mobile phone which I could also use to ring Southern numbers, insure my car and do other normal things that one does when moving to a job in a neighbouring jurisdiction.
It was incredibly complicated. Transferring money between Northern and Southern branches of the Bank of Ireland without punitive charges was impossible. The mass of conflicting information from mobile phone providers made my head spin. The purchase of car insurance was slowed by computers snagging on information from the South, and ridiculous sub-regulations that made it impossible for my wife to drive my Northern-registered car. Fellow Southerners told me to make sure that my children did not have an accident during a visit north for fear of exorbitant hospital charges. I concluded the article with a despairing cry: “Is it beyond the wit of financial institutions, telephone companies and health boards to start clearing the bureaucratic minefields which continue to litter this now largely peaceful territory?”
Nine years on I thought I would re-visit some of these problematic areas to see if there had been any progress. I was pleasantly surprised that the position re-mobile phones and car insurance seems to have got much better. Not surprisingly, the banking situation remains complicated, with some banks having improved while some – believe it or not – have actually got worse.
International mobile phone charges remain utterly impenetrable to most ordinary customers. However the companies assured me that everything had changed radically across the Irish border. O2 pointed to an announcement on their website dating from 2006 which promised that customers making previously costly ‘roaming’ calls (i.e. calls near the border that inadvertently connect to a network in the other jurisdiction) would not incur such charges in the future. At the same time the company announced an all-island ‘pre-pay’ flat rate for calls and texts. The website said ‘post-paid’ customers had been paying the same rate for cross-border calls as for domestic (i.e. own jurisdiction) calls since 2003.
A young man in the Vodafone head office in Dublin informed me that Vodafone in the Republic and Northern Ireland had reached an agreement that they would charge “the same price for calls between Belfast and Dublin as between Dublin and Waterford.” All I had to do was to ring Vodafone in Northern Ireland and get the “international bar” on my mobile “unbarred.”
[I have to say that I didn't actually test these statements myself. I took the decision nine years ago to have a Southern mobile phone for my calls from the South and a Northern mobile for my calls from the North, and have stuck with that safe, old-fashioned option ever since. I would be interested in other regular cross-border travellers' experience of using mobile phones.]
Car insurance couldn’t have been easier. By quoting my Irish driving licence, the make of my Northern car, and the postcode in my Northern address – and assuring her that both my wife and I had ‘no claims’ bonuses in the South – the same Armagh insurance broker I had such difficulty with nine years earlier was able within five minutes to give me a very competitive rate of £269 for a year’s comprehensive insurance covering both me and my wife.
The banks were a different story2. The worst was the Bank of Ireland, which nine years ago was proposing to charge £6 per cross-border transaction (via bank draft), had now raised this to an exorbitant £25 for a ‘telegraphic transfer’. First Trust Bank (a sister bank of AIB) offered the same high-charge same day transfer, or a £14 charge for a Euro draft which I would then have to post myself. Ulster Bank said a cross-border BACS transaction would cost £25, but helpfully added that if I wanted to pay a cheque into a branch in the North, the bank would use its internal mail system to transfer it to an Ulster Bank branch in Dublin on the following day at no extra cost.
Perhaps the most improved banks of all are the two which since 2005 have been part of the Danish Danske Bank Group: Northern Bank and National Irish Bank. If you trust online banking, you can now transfer money electronically between these two banks free of charge, whereas before there would have been a cross-border change of €10 in the South and £12 in the North.
However having a good Scandinavian IT platform doesn’t mean the bad old Irish banking habits of indifference to the ordinary customer have disappeared. Attracted by this new cross-border offer, I went into a large NIB branch in Dublin recently to inquire about opening a savings account with a relatively sizeable amount of money. I have to say that the official behind the counter couldn’t have been less interested.
Andy Pollak
1 I’ve got those cross-border blues March 2000, Irish Times
2 For a comparison of cross-border personal banking charges see Border People
The bank mess is not just a North-South problem. Recently I wanted to make a transfer of 30K euro from my AIB account to a BoI account, within the South. I could have done this in six lots of 5K euro via internet banking, over six days. Not good! The local AIB branch wanted to charge me 25 euro for the transfer. After I complained, they told me that I could have a bank draft for the whole 30K, costing some very trivial amount. The complicated, time consuming, manual process completed, I took the draft, walked to the nearby BoI branch, and deposited it in the other account. Result! Big saving and some healthy exercise thrown in free!
Try to make sense of that! Has the whole banking world gone mad?
On mobiles – mind your “Roaming Settings”. When you cross from one jurisdiction to another, your mobile will look for a local service. If you’re on O2 and it finds Vodafone, the costs can be HUGE. So make sure you’re on the right network.
And the “free roaming” does NOT apply to data, and data is horrendously expensive. So if you watch the rugby on the iPhone (yes, there are such!) you can have a bill running into thousands (no, I’m not exaggerating – the largest of which I have heard was over €50,000).
Eoin
Hi Andy, Goodness me your story could not be more applicable to my life!! I myself am from the north however my other half is from Dublin. In 2005 we started a long distance relationship. Our problems started with mobile phones, we had a similar goose chase and went round each of the providers asking what would be the best option as i needed a northern phone and he needed a southern phone. No one company could provide us with a good answer. I ended up gettin an O2 northern phone and a ROI Vodafone mobile, two phones. My other half got my ROI number put as a ‘Friends’ number on his contract and that meant he could ring my Vodafone number for free anytime regardless of whether i was in the north or not. However when i would answer my southern phone it would cost 25c each time. We were delighted with this solution at the time as the phonebill costs before this were awful. After about a year of that Vodafone announced that they were no longer charging the 25c for answering calls and so since then I can receive calls on my southern vodafone phone for free no matter if im in the north or south!! I still carry two phones but hey this is better than in the very beginning!!
Now to the banks – Dear GOD! Awful! I got a few weeks summer work in Dublin. I was back home then and i tried to lodge a Euro Ulster Bank check in my Northern Ulster Bank account and they wouldnt accept it. I then drove to Monaghan to attempt to lodge it in southern ulster bank however they told me the two were in no way linked. It was a disaster. I was paid with a euro Ulster Bank check, and i have a northern Ulster bank account yet they could not link up.
Oh well, i was glad to read your article and realise im not the only one who encounters these issues!!
Laura
I live just on the border and use O2 pre-paid, and the roaming protection for me isn’t free. O2 have sold me a “bolt-on” service costing me 1.50 sterling per month for the privilege of not paying roaming fees if I go to my front door and get a Republic phone connection rather than the back door and get a UK phone connection.
Likewise with credit cards. I can get any number of Sterling denominated credit cards in Enniskillen, but none of the “Southern” banks there will give me a Euro denominated card. If I go over the border to the bank we use in the Republic it will not give me a Euro credit card (despite being happy to run a Euro denominated current account for me) but, because my address is in the North, it will only give me a Sterling denominated credit card (and will charge me currency fees to top it up from my Euro denominated current account). My assistance came from the friendly teller in my local branch over the border who advised me to tell a few white lies by changing my address to one in the South “They don’t check too hard when you’re changing address, only when you first open an account” she whispered, then applying for the Euro denominated credit card using the Southern address and then changing my address with the bank back to my current Northern address.
On the bank charges front it is horrendous to put up with such high costs for moving your own money. Also beware of banks that say they transfer for free. Usually this just means there is no longer an upfront charge. Currency providers including banks and MSBs (money service providers) make money between the rate they offer you and the interbank market rate. (With the banks the spread is so large that it still obviously covers their upfront charge). I now use irelandfx.com when I have several thousand or more pounds to transfer to my euro account which saves me a fair amount. Their rates have always been keen. Other MSB providers are hifx.com and moneycorp worth checking.
I am a regular between Belfast and Dublin. When I travel on public transport the Garda practice ‘ethnic profiling’ by selecting non-white passengers for paper checks.
This practice is particularly sickening and gives the impression that the Garda believe that there is more than one race in this world. When I travel by bus I sit up front and insist that the Garda inspect my Irish passport. They then follow suit by inspecting everyone on the bus without prejudice.
Who is driving the differentiation between Northern and Southern consumers on this little island?
When are we going to expect to get fair treatment from the gombeen men -or is that an oxymoron I have just com-posed?
The exploitation of ordinary working people by the corporate elite, is in need of exposure and particularly in border areas where it is conspicuously obvious. Well done for your valuable comments on these issues.Can we not create a vocal pressure group for wronged consumers?
Re Sterling/Euro transfers, I avail of the Bank of Ireland, which used to, but currently does not, charge for foreign drafts (cheques). I use the branch at High Street, Belfast.
But I now use an online service, HiFX (http://www.hifxonline.co.uk), which offers both commission-free transactions and electronic transfers (also free). However, minimum transaction is about 250 Pounds/euros.
Re mobiles, have you considered some form of 3G/Skype solution?