The Royal Bank of Scotland’s mobile branch is no longer visiting Portlethen due to a lack of customers. Instead the mobile branch will be in Stonehaven twice a week, where the local branch is closing on Monday, 2 October. Staff will be relocating to other branches.
The mobile branch will be sited in the Co-op car park on David Street on Mondays from 12.30-1.30pm, and Thursdays from 12.15-1.15.
I tried to find out more about the ceasing of the service in Portlethen, which had a bank branch for 20 years. When it closed, the mobile service was put in place. It used to be found on Mondays in the railway station car park.
I emailed the bank’s customer services and this is what they told me: “I have investigated your query and would like to inform that I am unable to assist you from this office regarding Mobile Banking.” They advised that I call their telephone banking service. Not impressed.
I enlisted the help of North East Liberal Democrat MSP Mike Rumbles who contacted the bank’s communications team. A more professional response arrived today: “We review our whole mobile branch network on a regular basis to ensure that we are serving customers in the right way. After analysing our mobile branch service in Portlethen we decided to redeploy the van because just one customer a week was turning up and on some occasions, we did not serve anyone at all. With this in mind, we took the decision to redeploy the resource so the mobile branch could be of benefit to a greater number of customers, with multiple stops at Westhill and Stonehaven each week.
“We always notify customers in advance of mobile branch timetable changes. In this instance, both our Customer Service Manager on the mobile branch and the Inverurie Branch Manager (the mobile branch base), proactively spoke to the customer to talk through the other ways in which they can bank locally and have offered support. I understand the customer is comfortable with these alternatives.”
With only one customer a week I can understand why the decision was made.
The bank’s website shows timings for the mobile bank, not including Portlethen: http://personal.rbs.co.uk/personal/ways-to-bank/mobile-branch/inverurie.html